


All the Right Places, All the Wrong Times

by MaloryArcher



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Best Friends, Eventual Romance, F/F, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2018-11-14 09:21:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 34,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11205060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaloryArcher/pseuds/MaloryArcher
Summary: Lexa's set on finally telling Clarke how she feels when her estranged father dies unexpectedly. He leaves behind a wrench in Lexa's plans, and a whole lot more than she could've ever bargained for.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hear me out: I know I should be finishing A Very Griffin Fake Christmas (which I'm about 2500 words into) or updating Tuesdays at the Lark (which I'm like 74 words into), but I'm turning 24 today, and (after my fifth existensial crisis and the death of one of my favorite old customers at my restaurant) I'm feeling a little angstier than I think y'all want either of those stories to be. 
> 
> I'm also feeling this crushing pressure to put more of my work into the real world instead of pretending like I'm gonna live forever and/or have all the time in the world to write the shit I wanna write and do the shit I wanna do.
> 
> Also, I realized my new favorite coffee shop sells craft beers real cheap, and this seemed like a good idea after two (which is basically drunk now that i'm old)
> 
> So, now that you know me more intimately than my therapist...Enjoy?

Lexa’s whole body practically thrums as she weaves through traffic, trying cut across five lanes before she misses her exit. Horns honk unkindly, her air conditioning is only functioning at about half-capacity, and she’s only fifteen minutes in to the hour-long commute home, but none of that matters.

What matters is that she’s expecting a call.

After every work day, around five-thirty, Lexa’s phone rings. And, every day, Lexa plugs her phone into the cassette adapter she keeps in her beat-up old Toyota, and she accepts the call. Five days each week, Clarke’s voice rings out loud and gravelly over practically ancient speakers, while Lexa shouts to be heard over the sporadic blowing of the air conditioner and the squealing of the brake pads.

The drive home is Lexa’s favorite part of the day. It wasn’t always.

She hated being stuck in place after entire days of being forced to sit still. She loathed being honked at and cut off after hours of being sucked into meaningless small talk with flirty nerd boys in ill-fitting suit jackets. She despised being too hot, then too cold, too windblown, then too boxed in by her crappy car after having felt all the exact same feeling from her narrow cubicle. More than any of that, she hated that, without fail, no matter which route she traveled, she always spent at least five extra minutes trapped on the wrong side of the train tracks, only two or three blocks from her house.

None that fazes her anymore, not when she has Clarke’s call to look forward to.

The first call, on a Tuesday evening, when Lexa had just missed her exit, and gotten herself trapped in an unmoving traffic jam with no end in sight, was unexpected. Clarke had already been off work for hours, and she had plenty of time to waste before one of the night classes she was taking. She’d called Lexa on a whim, expecting to have to leave a message, and then she’d yelled at Lexa for a full thirty seconds after picking up about answering the phone while behind the wheel.

After that, when Lexa had assured her friend that she wouldn’t answer if she couldn’t do it safely, and that she wouldn’t keep her on the line if not for her pitifully engineered version of Bluetooth on a 90s-era car, it became a daily thing. Lexa would trudge through her day, rolling her eyes at the backs of those flirty nerd boys’ heads and crunching numbers until her eyes felt like they were due to bleed, and then Clarke would swoop in making jokes and telling stories about shrill, but endearing, professor, and making Lexa’s whole day better.

But then, Clarke always makes everything better.

Lexa knows why. If she’s honest with herself, she’s always known why. In twenty years of friendship, four-fifths of their lives, Clarke Griffin has grown and learned and changed, and, somehow, she still makes everything better.

Lexa’s body isn’t thrumming because she’s excited for the call, although she is always excited for Clarke to call. It’s thrumming because today is the day when everything changes.

It’s Friday, and Clarke doesn’t have class. In fact, in two weeks, she’ll be done with the nursing class that’s been monopolizing half her time, and she’ll qualify for a promotion that she’s pretty much deserved for months, the one Lexa knows she’s going to earn in no time. It’s Friday, and Lexa’s work is the furthest thing from her mind, since she has two full days to pretend she hasn’t sold her soul to the corporate devil. It’s Friday, and, today, when Clarke calls, Lexa is inviting her over, and then she’s inviting her out.

Not just out to that ramen bar they both keep hearing about, or to that new museum exhibit downtown that Lexa’s been meaning to see, or to the Renaissance fair that Clarke secretly loves visiting every year. No, Lexa’s inviting Clarke out in a way she hasn’t ever invited Clarke out.

Like, _out_ out. On a date.

They’ve been friends almost all their lives, and Lexa’s tired of dating other girls and comparing them to Clarke. She’s tired of watching Clarke on other people’s arms, watching her best friend settle for people who think it’s a sacrifice to travel sixty miles to the nearest drive-in theater even though it’s one of Clarke’s favorite places, tired of spending sixty percent of her time wishing Clarke was closer and forty percent of her time wishing she could do something about it.

It isn’t like they haven’t been heading in this direction for months. Years, even.

Lexa thinks she’s been falling for her best friend since they met, but she’s almost as sure that Clarke’s felt the same since the end of college, at least. For years, she’s felt them getting closer, toeing the line between best friends and something _else_. A few times, _friendly_ cuddling has seemed just a little too intimate. More than a few times, one of them has had a couple drinks too many and wound up centimeters away from a boundary line that’s existed since they were children.

Except the timing was always off. Every almost was just that, an almost. Every heavy moment evaporated into a joke, every innuendo into a quick change of subject. One of them was always seeing someone or throwing themselves into school or drowning in work.

But today, it’s time. No more delays, no more excuses. Lexa is trapped in gridlocked traffic, and she’s nervous as hell, but, when that phone rings, all she has to do is answer it. She just has to swipe her finger across the screen and trust that she knows Clarke as well as she thinks she does, that the things she’s been ignoring for years are real.

She’s ready.

Lexa’s white-knuckling the steering wheel when her phone rings, and, somehow, all the nerves melt away. She doesn’t even look at the caller ID before she accepts.

The call picks up over the car speakers, and Lexa’s grin is wide and unrestrained when she says, “I was hoping I’d hear from you.”

“Lexa,” a woman’s voice booms, loudly enough that Lexa has to turn down the knob. It isn’t Clarke. “Lexa, is that you?”

It takes her a moment, but Lexa knows that voice. She hasn’t heard it in a year, maybe more, but it hasn’t changed. Lexa’s knuckles go white around the steering wheel again, completely involuntarily.

“Diana?”

“Yeah, Lexa, it’s me. I, uh, I don’t know how to tell you this, but it’s about Titus.”

She almost forgets to breathe. She hasn’t heard from him since long before she stopped hearing from Diana.

“Don’t tell me he has cancer, or something. Actually,” she decides, “Don’t tell me, at all. If Titus needs me to know something, he’s free to call. Doesn’t mean I’ll answer, but my number doesn’t change.”

She almost hangs up instinctively, but Diana stops her cold.

“He’s dead, Lexa,” Diana says, “Your dad got in an accident this morning, and he didn’t make it.”

“What?”

“When can you be here?”

“What? Be where?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lexa. I know you two had your issues, but your father’s dead, Sienna, too, and Madi needs you here.”

Lexa’s lucky traffic is at a standstill, or she honestly might wind up in an accident of her own. She hasn’t spoken to Titus in years, or, really, he hasn’t spoken to her. He’s the one who constantly moved around. He’s the one who cycled through cell phone numbers the way some people cycle through paperback books.

And also, “Who is Sienna? And Madi? I don’t know either of them,” she says, wracking her brain for a single mention of either of those people.

“Jesus Christ, Titus,” Diana huffs, apparently more to herself than to Lexa, “Sienna was his wife, and she was a real sweetheart. Madi’s their daughter. She’s your younger sister, Lexa.”

Lexa barely registers Diana mumbling about Madi being her _half_ -sister, and whatever else she’s prattling on about.

It isn’t shocking, necessarily, having a sister she’s never heard of. There are plenty of things Lexa assumes she doesn’t know about Titus, plenty of gaps of time and space that she never could fill with her imagination, or her best Google searching. It isn’t shocking, or at least it shouldn’t be, but Lexa can’t quite wrap her head around it. 

There’s something more concrete about the idea of having a sister than having a dead dad. Titus hasn’t been in Lexa’s life in years, and not seeing him doesn’t feel like proof that he’s gone. Knowing that she won’t see him frowning in disdain or walking away again doesn’t feel like any more of a loss than it did when she was a kid and he was just disappearing back into the life Lexa was never much a part of.

Madi, though…Madi is a living, breathing person who Lexa has to see, has to meet. A living, breathing person who, apparently, shares half of Lexa’s DNA, and not the half she’s proud of.

Traffic speeds to a crawl, and Diana is still talking.

“She’s looking forward to meeting you. There are flights available each day this week, but the sooner the better. I’m expecting to have preparations complete by Sunday, so expect a Tuesday service, maybe Wednesday, at the latest. You know they can’t keep people on ice for long. Bring your friend, if you want, you know the one. That blonde girl. I know this is a lot, but please try to be here as soon as possible, and leave the confrontational attitude at home, Lexa. Your father is gone, so just try to let things go, okay?”

There isn’t much she can say. Lexa wants to tell Diana to fuck off. She wants tell her that, if she thinks Titus and Lexa were on a know-your-partner’s-name or a talk-about-your-new-offspring basis, then she doesn’t know shit. She wants to tell her that she doesn’t belong at this funeral, just like she didn’t belong at his mother’s funeral all those years ago, or his father’s all those years before. She wants to scream about how unfair it is to be expected to mourn people who barely took the time to know her, but, most of all, she just wants to scream.

Titus is dead, and, for years, Lexa swore up and down that she hated him, and it hasn’t even sunk in yet, but she wants to scream.

Her father is dead. Her inconsistent, secretive, distant, estranged father is dead, and Lexa always thought she wouldn’t care, but she feels like screaming.

Not crying, not praying, not mourning. Screaming.

Nothing feels like she expected it to, creeping along the interstate, refusing to open her mouth because she honestly doesn’t know what’s going to come out.

Diana keeps saying her name, trying to get her to agree, or affirm, or lie, and Lexa can’t open her mouth.

The speakers get obnoxiously loud again, but this time only for three beats. Three high pitched sounds that cut down on Diana’s voice and, somehow, don’t make Lexa feel like she’s any more in control of her own ability to speak.

Three interruptions to remind her of what she was actually waiting for. Clarke’s call.

_Clarke._

It's always the wrong time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not what she planned on telling Clarke tonight, but Lexa tells her anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In math terms, 3 beers equals approximately 1,300 words, and I fully intend to drink several beers this weekend. Mid-20s metabolism be damned.

Lexa feels like she loses hours of her life in traffic. Really, less than forty-five minutes after hanging up with Diana, she’s parking in the small lot behind Clarke’s apartment complex. She couldn’t bring herself to answer the blonde’s call, even after using Clarke as an excuse to get Diana off the phone, so she’d sent it to voicemail and sent a text instead. Nothing too detailed, just a question, _are you at home_ , and an _I’m coming over_ when the other woman said she was.

She isn’t calmer, exactly, but the urge to scream seems less immediate.

In the car, it felt like chewing gum. It felt like a bubble of chewing gum, filling her mouth, threatening to expand right into her throat, even though she couldn’t remember having blown it. It felt like, the second she opened her mouth, it would just keep growing, until it enveloped the whole world.

Here, sitting in the heat of her car, it feels more like she’s just dry-swallowed a multi-vitamin. It’s uncomfortable. It hurts, even. But at least she isn’t as afraid to open her mouth.

Clarke is expecting her. Upstairs, she’s probably reading from her textbook on a stool in front of the breakfast bar, even though she’d rather be sitting out on her small balcony, so she won’t miss Lexa ringing the buzzer. Lexa doesn’t want to keep her waiting.

She pockets her keys and slips out of the car, walking slowly toward the door. Gravel crunches underneath her shiny work shoes as she considers what she’s going to say when Clarke lets her in. She ran through possibilities on the drive: pop culture references, jokes to make where the dead dad punchline doesn’t feel forced or painful. She wanted to find a way to tell Clarke without sending her into over-protective best friend mode. If she could also get through it without inviting that awful screaming feeling back, even better.

She wants to seem as unbothered as she wishes she were, not because she wants to lie to Clarke, but because, if she can convince the person who knows her best, then she can convince herself.

It feels like no time at all passes between ringing Clarke’s buzzer and making it to her second floor apartment. One second Lexa’s standing on the cement stoop, a little sweaty even after undoing the top few buttons on her collared shirt, and the next, the door is opening before her, and Clarke is disappearing beyond it in a flurry of excitement over something that happened at work.

Lexa follows her through the doorway and, being here, seeing Clarke, makes her feel the tiniest bit better.

Clarke leads her right out to the balcony, after pulling Lexa’s wrinkled blazer out of her hands and draping it on the back of the couch. There are two lounge chairs set up, one brown and one blue, facing the tiny greenspace across the street. Lexa drops into the brown one, and wills herself to laugh at a genuinely funny anecdote about a pair of horny octogenarians finding out the hard way that they’d accidentally grabbed a latex condom instead of polyurethane.

“It was the worst,” Clarke says, scrunching her nose, “like an overcooked hotdog left in the sun. Just bursting. I’m probably scarred for life. He definitely is.”

The blonde shudders in her tank top, then seems to notice that Lexa isn’t doing the same, is barely reacting at all.

“Everything okay,” she asks, “you seem, I don’t know, off.”

Lexa takes a deep breath.

“Something weird happened today.”

Clarke scrunches her whole face up this time, and says, “Did that Atom kid try to ask you out again? He did, didn’t he,” she says, barely stopping for breath, “I swear to God I will drive down to that office and—”

“It wasn’t that,” Lexa tells her, smiling softly, because Clarke really would drive to her office if she thought one of the nerd boys wasn’t taking no for an answer, “it wasn’t a work thing.”

“The drive, then? Is that why you couldn’t pick up?”

“Something like that,” Lexa says, pausing to look at Clarke, and then away again. She can feel blue eyes burning into the side of her face when she says, “Guess who’s officially an orphan?”

It wasn’t one of the lines she rehearsed, not one of the tasteless jokes or faux-casual reveals. It feels all wrong coming out of her mouth. Lexa chances a peak at Clarke, and her eyes have practically doubled in size.

“Or don’t guess,” Lexa adds in what she thinks is a light voice, “because it’s me.”

“Titus died,” Clarke asks, finally.

“This morning,” Lexa confirms, “Car accident.”

“Are you okay?”

Clarke’s hand, the one that’s closest to Lexa reaches out, but stops just short of touching her.

Lexa shrugs and shrinks away from the touch.

“Sienna sure isn’t,” she says, and this whole casual thing is failing miserably.

“Who’s Sienna,” Clarke asks, as bewildered as Lexa was an hour ago.

“Titus’ wife. Madi’s mom, I guess. A ‘real sweetheart’, according to Diana,” Lexa swallows thickly, “she’s dead now, too.”

“Titus is married,” Clarke practically shouts, shooting straight out of her lounger, “ _was_ married? When? How? And he has a kid? Another kid, I mean? Since when?”

The blonde is pacing around now, back and forth, athletic shorts swishing with every step, looking to Lexa for answers to these questions she didn’t even know to ask an hour ago. She stops, right in front of Lexa, and all the curiosity in face, the pinch of her brows, the slack-jawed astonishment, and the flailing hands, it all goes still. Clarke goes still. She looks at Lexa, her eyes shining, and she says, “I’m so sorry, Lex.”

Lexa can’t hold her sad gaze. She looks away again, swallows around a lump in her throat that thankfully doesn’t seem to be concealing a scream this time, and she shrugs again.

“I didn’t know,” she starts, but she doesn’t know where to end it, so she just says, “We haven’t spoken since I graduated high school.”

“I know,” Clarke says, but not in her know-it-all voice, not in the voice she uses when one of their guy friends slips into the most casual of mansplaining; she says it in the voice Lexa only ever hears when Clarke doesn’t really know what to say.

Lexa chews the inside of her lip for a second, and folds her arms.

“I didn’t even know him,” she reasons, wondering why she feels so heavy, why her eyes are stinging and her chest aching.

“I know,” Clarke says again, in that same voice.

“I never even liked him,” Lexa admits, “not really.”

Clarke tilts her head to the side, because, of all the people still alive in this world, Clarke must remember how much little Lexa lit up at the idea of seeing her dad, even just for a few days each year. Of all the people in Lexa’s life, Clarke must know how badly she’s lying to herself. Again, she says, “I know.”

“I thought I hated him,” Lexa whispers, wishing she could just keep sinking into the cushion on her chair, anything to fall right out of this moment. “I wanted to hate him.”

When the first of Clarke’s tears falls, Lexa knows trying to keep her own at bay is a lost cause. The blonde’s eyes get all red and glossy, and she sniffles before she says, one more time, “I know.”

“Why don’t I hate him, Clarke,” Lexa asks, “why do I feel like this?”

Clarke practically throws herself into Lexa’s chair, half on her lap, to pull her into her arms.

“I don’t know,” she murmurs into Lexa’s hair as she cradles the brunette against her shoulder, “I don’t know.”

Clarke doesn’t push when Lexa says she doesn’t want to talk about it. She never does. Instead, Clarke holds her close, closer than what’s probably sane in the heat of mid-June. When Lexa cries, when all the inexplicable feeling gets tangled in her throat and rains down her face, Clarke cries a little, too. It doesn’t make any sense. It makes all the sense in the world.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lexa really doesn't want to go, even though she has to.

Lexa’s been to Titus’ hometown four times before, and one of those trips took place before she was old enough to walk. Two of them were for funerals. It’s hard not to dread this one. The fifth visit. The third funeral. Well, third and fourth, technically.

At least, this time, Clarke will be with her.

After she was all cried out on Friday, Lexa relayed what Diana had said about being in the middle of arranging the funeral. Clarke spent half an hour combing through overpriced flights with her, because, of course, flights are ten times more expensive right before you need them, until Lexa felt even more frustrated than before. The blonde took one long look at her before asking whether they should consider driving instead.

And that’s how they wound up agreeing to make the twelve-hour road trip instead of wasting the money on two flights.

Lexa was so stuck on the “we” of it that she just nodded dumbly. There was no use trying to talk Clarke out of coming along, even if it meant a few days of last minute shift changes and having to miss a class. _It’s a family emergency, Lex_ , Clarke told her, _and I can call in a couple favors at the nursing home_. Lexa couldn’t help but mention that Titus was hardly family to her, let alone Clarke, but the blonde just rolled her eyes and said, _I’m not taking time off for Titus. He’s not my family. You are._

The blonde was a force to be reckoned with when it came to the planning. She broke the news to her parents, who were quick to offer up her dad’s brand-new SUV for the journey. She called Diana from Lexa’s phone, jotting down directions and an approximation of the events they were expected to attend. She held Lexa’s hand as the brunette Skyped Anya, her sister who lives half-way around the world, and took over when the crying thing started happening again and made it too hard for Lexa to explain what was happening.

Well, her other sister, now that Madi’s in the picture.

When all that was done, the blonde ordered dinner, only pushed a little when Lexa could only bring herself to pick at it, and then she let the brunette sleep over. 

They had Saturday and Sunday to square away things at work and school. Lexa’s boss was quick to throw out a _take all the time you need_ , and Clarke’s coworkers had no problem covering her shifts for a few days. The blonde was even allowed to take an exam early, and to test out on a couple skills, so she wouldn’t fall behind before graduation.

It wasn’t easy, exactly, but everything was in order before Lexa could slip into bed on Sunday night, and she appreciated it.

Bright and early Monday morning, Clarke is behind the wheel and Lexa’s leaning against the open passenger side window, the onslaught of wind whipping into her face so hard that all she can really focus on is reminding herself to breathe.

It’s for the best, Lexa supposes, when they’re only thirty minutes into the drive, because thinking too hard would probably just make her ask Clarke to turn the SUV around and head back home.

Thirty minutes of craning her neck to feel the harshness of the breeze turns into two hours before Lexa knows it. Clarke keeps her eyes on the road, except for when she’s stealing a quick glance at Lexa. She doesn’t mention it, so Lexa doesn’t either. The brunette feels like she’s in a trance, like she’s in a dream, but hasn’t realized it yet.

The landscape whizzes by, green and blue and brown, all blurring together.

Cars zoom and merge and weave on either side of them.

The sun heats the metal and plastic on the door of the SUV, and Lexa shrinks almost imperceptibly further into her seat to avoid being burned.

When her eyes refuse to focus, when her mind can’t be bothered to formulate complex thoughts or dissect compounding emotions, when her body will only move slightly and grudgingly, regardless of what she wants it to do, Lexa feels like she’s floating.

She feels like she’s floating, and she hates it.

It’s silly, she knows, because she’s in the passenger seat of Jake Griffin’s SUV, and she’s on her way to pay compulsory respects to a man who was scarcely more than a stranger, and his wife, who _was_ a stranger. She’s cruising along the interstate, and there’s a seat belt crossing her midsection. The sun is hot on one forearm and her upper thigh, and she knows she isn’t actually floating, but it feels like she is.

Her brain is still forcing her to regulate the breaths she takes, but it’s also making her feel like her body isn’t enough to anchor her here, in her seat, in this SUV.

She doesn’t know what to do or say, or how to articulate to Clarke the oddities of her mind and her body in this moment. She doesn’t know how to break one more bit of news to Clarke, who has already dropped everything just to help Lexa face a trip she doesn’t want to take and people she doesn’t want to see.

She doesn’t have to.

Lexa’s valiantly trying to force her brain to concede to the realities of this moment, the heat and the tension and the awfulness of it all, when she hears it. Clarke. Humming. Softly, but not softly enough to keep the sound of it from hitting Lexa like a lasso, pulling her right back into her seat.

Lexa doesn’t know the song, doesn’t think she’s ever heard it before in her life, but it pulls her right out of her head.

She looks over at the blonde, letting her head fall back against the headrest.

Clarke must feel her eyes.

“Shit, sorry, I was trying to be quiet,” she says, blue eyes darting over to Lexa and then back onto the road.

“Don’t be,” Lexa says, “Keep going. Please?”

“Okay,” Clarke says, peeking over once more.

She clears her throat and picks up where she left off. Lexa clings to the sound, eyes trained on Clarke’s profile, until she falls into a dreamless sleep.

 

 

Lexa wakes up windblown and unevenly tanned forty-five minutes later, with Clarke still humming. The blonde has pulled a pair of aviators on and ditched the hoodie she was wearing when they left her parents’ driveway. Lexa admires the way she drives, left hand resting on the steering wheel, right arm stretched out, draped along the back of Lexa’s seat, so close that it would take minimal effort, not even a full reach, for Lexa run her fingers along a smooth forearm.

“I like it when you hum,” she says groggily, unslumping herself in her seat.

“Good,” Clarke smiles as she takes her hand away, “I like humming.”

Lexa smiles at the side of Clarke’s face.

“You should pull over soon. I’ll give you a break.”

“I’m fine,” Clarke tells her.

“You’re not driving the whole way, Clarke. We’re taking turns.”

“I know that,” she says quickly.

“I have to pee,” Lexa says, “preferably at the nearest rest stop.”

“Do you really have to pee? Or are you just trying to get me out of the driver’s seat,” the blonde asks, pressing her lips together and raising a quick eyebrow at Lexa.

“You’ll have to pull over to find out.”

Clarke signals into the turning lane, then steers them toward the nearest rest stop.

Lexa _does_ have to pee. Beating Clarke back to the driver’s seat is just a bonus.

Really, Lexa is twenty paces ahead, standing on the passenger’s side when Clarke hits the unlock button, and the brunette basically dives inside, then crawls ungracefully over the console until her knees are bumping the steering wheel and Clarke is indulgently rolling her eyes and dangling the keys outside Lexa’s window.

“I’m not an invalid, you know,” Lexa reminds her when Clarke is buckled in beside her.

“Mm-hmm,” Clarke affirms.

“And that I wouldn’t ask you to chauffeur me around for twelve hours?”

Clarke nods seriously, “Mm-hmm.”

“Even though I know you would?”

“I would,” she shrugs.

“But you know I wouldn’t want you to, right? Because, I am perfectly capable of switching off with you, and driving is exhausting, and—”

“I know you’re capable, Lexa,” Clarke says, reaching over to squeeze a hand around Lexa’s wrist, “and I know you wouldn’t ask, okay? I just,” she wrinkles her nose and shrugs again, “I’m just trying to take care of you.”

Lexa takes a deep breath and wriggles her wrist out of Clarke’s grasp to clasp their hands together.

“You’re really good at that.”

Clarke blushes and says, “I try.”

“You succeed. All the time. But, if we’re going to get through this in one piece, you have to let me take care of you, too. Okay? No going all Furiosa and refusing to share the wheel.”

“Other people do end up getting to drive the—”

“Not the point,” Lexa chastises, and Clarke rolls her eyes again.

“Fine,” she agrees through a smile, “we’ll share the wheel.”

“Thank you,” Lexa says, releasing Clarke’s hand to start the engine.

“And we’ll arrive all shiny and chrome to meet Immortan Diana.”

“I hate you,” Lexa sing-songs as she pulls out of their spot.

“But you’ll love me in Valhalla,” Clarke singsongs right back.

“You’re not funny,” Lexa lies, feeling a whole lot more grounded than before, “and I’m not responding.”

“Good thing I brought my trusty flame-throwing guitar to keep me occupied,” Clarke says, digging into her backseat for the ukulele Lexa bought her for last birthday. The brunette hadn’t seen _that_ tossed in the backseat with the cooler of snacks Abby sent along for the ride.

Clarke makes up a silly song on the spot, and she gets way too into the motions, but, every time Lexa sneaks a peek at her, she feels her face splitting into a grin can’t seem to control. She looks at Clarke, entirely too excited to take on the rest of this bland drive, and she almost forgets that she ever had trouble finding herself in a moment like this.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the end of a long journey, Lexa is reunited with the first in a series of people she'd prefer not to see. Clarke, as always, makes it less bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the commenter who requested I have a craft beer for them: I did. It was a Kona Brewing Co. Big Wave and it was delightful.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

Lexa’s behind the wheel for the last leg of the drive. The GPS tells her which turns to make, but there’s a point, when they’re only a mile or so away, when things start to seem familiar. This is the first time she’s been old enough to drive herself, but there are bits and pieces of the surrounding neighborhoods, small stretches of road, modest, primary-colored parks, that she knows she’s seen before.

She remembers her last trip, the summer before her fourteenth birthday, when she’d been sandwiched between Anya and her mother in the front seat of their old pick-up truck, wide-eyed and excited as she looked for the house. She remembers that this dread she feels, the apprehension and the anger and the disdain for this place and almost everyone in it, wasn’t always there.

When they’re pulling up to the house that Titus’ parents built, the one his parents had left to Diana, Lexa stops at the curb and switches off the engine. She doesn’t want to give the wrong impression. They texted to let Diana know when to expect them, but Lexa hadn’t mentioned that they’d be staying in a hotel each night, instead of in the house. It should be easier this way, with the inconvenience of walking all the way up the driveway, then back down, just to grab their things and do it all again, to keep Diana from wasting her breath trying to convince them to cancel their reservation.

Diana stands stiffly at the top of the long driveway while Lexa and Clarke shuffle forward, a starched-looking apron hanging from her shoulders, even though Lexa swears the woman has never been much good in the kitchen. Even several feet away, Lexa can tell that Diana’s white capris are pressed to a point, her shirt pristine and pricey, and her make-up impeccably painted on.

Lexa is shocked by how little the woman has changed from the imprint she left all those years ago, when they saw each other last. Her hair is longer than Lexa remembers, wavier and grayer, too, and the brunette spots a few wrinkles that weren’t there before. Otherwise, Diana is every bit the wannabe Stepford Wife of Lexa’s memory.

Lexa takes slow steps beside Clarke, drags her feet and considers escaping back into the safety of lightly-tinted windows and ukulele songs.

Despite her strongest internal objections, Lexa makes it to the top, where she gets pulled into a hug. Diana even smells just like she did when Lexa was younger, like a thick cloud of rosewood perfume and sweated-out vodka. Lexa only just manages to suppress a gag.

Diana squeezes her harder than Lexa thinks should be possible with the smallness of her too-tan body. Bony arms seem to cut into Lexa’s flesh. There isn’t enough air in her lungs, or the entire world, probably, to keep the brunette from feeling short of breath.

“Finally, my niece is back. I wish it were under better circumstances, but welcome home, just the same,” Diana says to Lexa, even though she’s never considered this place a home. Not this state, not this city, and certainly not this house. “How was the drive?”

“It was fine,” Lexa says weakly, catching sight of Clarke holding back a smirk behind them, “uneventful.”

“Thank goodness you made it safely,” Diana says with Lexa still near-suffocating against her hair, “You really should’ve flown in, Lexa. Just in case. After Titus and Sienna’s accident, well, these things do tend to happen in threes. It might be superstition, but you never can be too careful.”

Lexa’s glad Diana can’t see her grimace.

“We’ll be sure to keep that in mind when we’re driving all the way home,” Lexa says, extracting herself from the older woman’s hold, and trying to keep her voice even. She takes the small step back to Clarke’s side. “You remember Clarke?”

“Of course, dear,” Diana says, pulling Clarke into a far more startling, but thankfully briefer hug, and then releasing her.

“Sorry for your loss,” Clarke offers, “Titus was really something.”

_A dirtbag_ , is the something they’d settled on around hour eight, but Diana doesn’t need to hear that.

“It’s been a few years, hasn’t it,” Diana asks cheerily, appraising both women.

“Seven,” Lexa reminds her easily, “We finished high school seven years ago.”

“Right,” Diana presses on with her thin smile, “well, you’ve both grown up beautifully.”

Clarke smiles her fake smile, the one that seems just as brilliant as her real one, but only to people who don’t know the difference, and thanks her.

“And should we be expecting Anya,” Diana asks, wringing her hands. Lexa has a feeling that her aunt is not so eager to see Anya again.

“I don’t know,” Lexa shrugs, “did you try calling her?”

She keeps her face as neutral as possible, all three of them knowing full well that, even if Diana had Anya’s number, she wouldn’t have called to break the news.

Lexa feels a gentle hand curve around her elbow before Clarke jumps in saying, “Anya’s in the middle of a big deadline at work, so she won’t be able to make it, but she sends her condolences.”

“What a pity,” Diana says, “We’ll just have to catch up next time.”

The smallest, cruelest part of Lexa’s brain wants her to remind Diana that she probably won’t set foot in this place again until her aunt is the one being eulogized, but, somehow, she swallows down those words.

“Maybe next time,” she says lightly, and Clarke squeezes once before letting her go.

“Do you have much luggage? I have your rooms all set up for you already. The boys are around here somewhere, I’m sure,” Diana says, looking back toward the front door.

Almost every time Lexa’s been here, she’s stayed in the same room. The first time, she liked it because the wallpaper was littered with little bunches of fruit that reminded her of Willy Wonka, and there were delicate little dolls in display cases on either side of the twin bed. Anya thought they were creepy all those years ago, but Lexa was in awe as a little girl, pressing her nose against the glass to get as close as possible to what she’d assumed was the most impressive toy collection in the world.

The awe wore off when Anya tried to help her liberate one of them, a ballerina posed on a stand, her toes frozen perpetually en pointe, because Lexa thought she was prettiest doll in the whole room. Titus’ mother had found them, Lexa unfurling a bun of synthetic hair while Anya was flipping all the other dolls around on their shelves and complaining about their unblinking eyes. Nobody had ever screamed at the girls like the old woman did in that moment. Lexa cried when wizened fingers snatched the ballerina away.

After that, staying in that room, a hundred shiny eyes directed in her general vicinity, was almost as unappealing to Lexa as it had been to her sister.

She damn sure doesn’t want to do it now.

“That won’t be necessary,” Lexa tells Diana, “Clarke and I already got a hotel.”

“We have plenty of room for you two,” Diana argues, “you know how many rooms we barely even look in when we don’t have company, Lexa? Too many.”

“I’m sure there will be a lot going on,” Clarke interjects, “lots of people in and out, and we didn’t want to impose.”

“You can’t impose on family,” the older woman insists, “really.”

“It’s a little late to cancel our reservation,” Lexa says.

“We’d be more than willing to offset the cost,” Diana tries again.

“I have sleep apnea,” Clarke blurts, and Lexa’s tries to stop herself from whipping her head in the blonde’s direction, “it’s a whole ordeal. Every night, I’m just sleeping like a baby, you know, and then, boom, not breathing," she brings both hands to her throat, mimes a little cough and splutter, "just breathless. So, I have a CPAP machine, I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Very clunky, and, I mean, just the loudest thing. Lexa’s trying not to put me on the spot,” she lies, gesturing at the brunette, “but it’s unpleasant, to say the least. Almost impossible to sleep through, even rooms away. Have you ever ridden in a chopper? It’s like that, just noisy.”

“I see,” Diana says, “perhaps the hotel is best, then. You’re still, of course welcome to stay here, Lexa.”

“I really couldn’t,” Lexa says, “I’m used to the CPAD—”

“CPAP,” Clarke corrects her.

“CPAP,” Lexa says, looking to Clarke, “It’s just white noise to me these days.”

Diana hums and looks between the two of them skeptically, so Lexa emphasizes, “Clarke’s right, though. It’s all very Chainsaw Massacre if you aren’t used to it, but in a comforting way.”

“A chronic lullaby,” Clarke adds glumly. Lexa bites her lip to keep from laughing.

“Are you sure you girls aren’t just trying to hide your _homosexuality_ ,” Diana bring her voice down when she stumbles over the last word, “because I’ve seen your Facebook page, dear, and we’ve all had our suspicions.”

Lexa laughs uncomfortably, while Clarke’s mouth drops open into unconcealed shock.

“We’re not—”

“Come on now, it’s 2017,” Diana says, “and we may hate the sin, but we love the sinners around here, girls.”

Clarke takes a deep breath and renews her fake smile, “That’s, uh, so sweet of you, Diana, but unnecessary.”

“We’re seriously not together,” Lexa says, narrowing her eyes at Diana, who apparently lurks on the periphery of her social media without ever having sent a friend request, “and I am, for the record, a _homosexual_ , but, in the spirit of it being 2017, feel free to just say ‘gay’. ‘Lesbian’ works, too, if you’re feeling particularly bold. Queer, even. The future is now, and our lexicon is constantly expanding.”

Diana’s smile looks like a wince.

“Still so spirited,” she says, pressing her lips together momentarily, “you and that sister of yours are just so…spirited.”

“We sure are,” Lexa confirms, through a thin smile of her own, “spirited.”

There’s a moment of charged silence, shifting eyes and smiles stretched against all instinct, and Lexa feels like they’re in a standoff, even if she has no weapon to draw.

“Well,” Clarke says, diffusing the smallest bit of tension, “it’s a bit late, so we should probably get on the road to the hotel. Should we assume that we’ll see everyone at the wake tomorrow?”

Diana’s eyes are slow to leave Lexa. It’s unnerving.

“Yes, that sounds about right. The wake doesn’t begin until three, and we’ll have a reception for close friends and family after, but it’ll be best if you’re here earlier. There are a few last-minute things I think you two can help me with. Nothing too strenuous, of course,” she says, “just little things. The stuff those boys of mine wouldn’t know how to do.”

She chuckles, as though the grown men in her family are helpless idiots, and Lexa wracks her brain trying to remember whether they are or not.

“We’ll be happy to help,” Clarke tells her.

Lexa fishes the car keys out of her pocket.

“You’ll also want to meet Madi at least once before, well, everything,” Diana reminds them.

“Of course,” Lexa says with more conviction than she feels.

“She’s asleep now, poor dear,” Diana says, “but I think she’ll be happy to see you.”

“Me too,” Lexa offers, but she feels all weird. She wishes Anya were here with her, raising hell and refusing to do anything but sneer in Diana’s general vicinity. She wants her older sister here instead of this Madi girl, this little sister she knows nothing about.

Diana finally lets them go, after what feels like a lifetime, and they head back down the driveway and slide back into their tinted-window sanctuary. Lexa starts the engine as they both watch Diana retreat into the house.

“Sleep apnea, really,” Lexa asks, finally letting out a laugh.

“In my defense, I didn’t know I could just tell her we’d rather have loud, lesbian sex in a hotel than sleep in separate rooms under her roof.”

They both lose it at that. It takes a full minute for Lexa to compose herself enough to pull away from the curb.

“How are you doing with all this,” Clarke asks when they're a few blocks away, “the Titus stuff and the Madi stuff?”

Lexa sucks in a deep breath and bites at the inside of her cheek.

“That bad, huh?”

The light ahead flashes red, stopping them in time for Lexa to look over at Clarke and shrug.

“I don’t know yet,” she admits.

“Okay,” Clarke says, blue eyes gazing sympathetically back at Lexa. Clarke gives one of the hands on the steering wheel a quick squeeze, then rights herself in her seat.

The light turns green, and Lexa doesn’t notice for a couple seconds, until someone behind her honks obnoxiously, because she’s too busy looking at Clarke.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning of Titus' wake brings Lexa closer to sister she doesn't know and reunites her with even more family she wasn't prepared to see. Clarke is by her side through it all.

Lexa is up before Clarke. Technically, the alarm Lexa set the night before wakes them at the same time, but, when Lexa opens her eyes and sits up in place, Clarke shuts hers tighter and grumbles until Lexa turns it off. The blonde mumbles something like _five more minutes_ , rolls over, and is out before Lexa can find a good reason to tell her ‘no’.

The room is dark, with ribbons of daylight sneaking in every time the artificial breeze of the air conditioner rattles the blinds. When Clarke goes back to sleep, Lexa sinks back into the shallow impression she’s left in the mattress. She tries to find patterns in the swirling texture of the ceiling, tries to relax into the firm pillow she brought from home, tries to focus on the steady rhythm of Clarke’s breathing; anything to distract herself.

It’s early still. Far earlier than they need to be up to start getting ready for the day. Early enough to claim first dibs on the continental breakfast, even though Lexa knows Clarke cares less about being first and more about getting there before the waffle batter runs out.

She looks at Clarke for a while, in what she hopes isn’t a creepy way. Clarke is the soundest sleeper Lexa knows. It doesn’t matter how she feels, if she’s happy or sad or anxious or terrified; when Clarke is ready to sleep, she puts her head down, closes her eyes, and she sleeps.

Lexa envies it. They’re best friends, of course, and, whether Clarke knows it or not, Lexa loves Clarke more than she ever thought she could love another person, but she envies this small part of Clarke so much it drives her crazy. The blonde’s nose twitches as she breathes, and she pouts occasionally in this way that Lexa might be a little obsessed with, but she doesn’t miss a wink of sleep.

Lexa, on the other hand, spent half of a sleepless night complaining about Diana and all the relatives she hasn’t even seen yet to the bleary-eyed blonde in her bed, and the other half tossing and turning and pacing around threadbare carpet. She doesn’t know how she managed to get any sleep at all.

Now, with daylight creeping in, when Lexa’s mind won’t stay in one place, when it won’t stay trained on the stiff peaks formed into the ceiling above her, it wanders. It wanders to places, and to people, she’d rather not be fixating on.

She doesn’t know what to expect from this day.

She knows what’s expected from her: where she has to be and when, what she has to do when she gets there; Clarke has it all written out for them. She knows what she’s wearing, what they’re both wearing, actually, right down to how they’ll be styling their hair. Their outfits are hanging in the closet, shoes lined up beneath them, makeup bags resting side-by-side on the counter. All the easiest questions have been answered and worked out and planned for.

There are things she doesn’t know, though.

Like, how she’s going to survive two days with Diana and a bunch of bereaved strangers who expect her to feel things she isn’t sure she’s capable of.

Like, what to do if she does feel those things, even if she really doesn’t want to.

Like, what to say to Madi, on the day she says goodbye to both of her parents.

Lexa wants to be able to tap into some wise, well-earned orphan knowledge, or something, but she doesn’t know how. This sister she doesn’t know will probably get more useful information from Harry Potter than she’ll get from Lexa.

She doesn’t know Madi; not even the first thing about her. Not her hobbies or her age or her birthday or whether Titus did any better this time around with the whole fatherhood thing.

Lexa lies still in bed, overthinking and frowning to herself, because Clarke deserves the rest, for as long as she can stand it. And when she can’t stand it anymore, Lexa lures Clarke from the brink of sleep with talk of waffles and fresh fruit.

To her credit, Clarke keeps her pouting to a minimum, and she only lets her head lull heavily between Lexa’s shoulder blades during the short elevator ride, before straightening up and pretending she wants to be anywhere but tucked into faintly bleach-scented linens.

 

 

The second time Lexa and Clarke make the trek up Diana’s long driveway, Lexa’s steps are even. She isn’t trying to stop time or drag her heels. It’s a little before noon, and the brunette is feeling as good as she supposes is possible after a quick Skype pep talk from Anya before they could leave the hotel.

Now, she just wants to get this day over with.

She feels stiff in her dress: it’s charcoal gray, with a muted Peter Pan collar, lint rolled to perfection the night before. She wants to believe that it’s fine, that it doesn’t matter what she wears today, whether her hair looks neat or her makeup tasteful, while she hovers in the vicinity of a coffin she isn’t sure she cares to see, but the last thing she needs is to be side-eyed by Diana or any of her relatives for not looking bereaved enough.

They knock this time, since Diana isn’t standing outside to greet them, and Lexa’s grateful when Clarke doesn’t ask whether she’s okay. Lexa still doesn’t know how she would answer that question, but it’s easy enough to return the gentle squeeze Clarke reaches out to give her hand.

When the door swings open, Lexa rolls her eyes so hard it almost gives her a headache.

One of Diana’s “boys” fills the open doorway with his body, one hand resting on the door, the other stretching to the lean against the door frame. He cocks a hip and looks   
Lexa up and down.

“Finally growing into those limbs, I see,” he says, in lieu of any normal pleasantries.

“Still haven’t grown into that scar, huh,” she asks, painting a smile on her face.

Lexa feels more than sees Clarke side-eyeing her while she watches a scruffy face break slowly into a smile. Her cousin makes no move to unblock the doorway as his eyes shift smoothly from Lexa to Clarke.

“My mother said you were bringing a _special friend_ ,” he says, “and I always figured we were batting for the same team. I didn’t think you had it in you to pull somebody this gorgeous, though.”

Clarke gives him the same half-hearted smile she’d given Diana the night before, but somehow tones it down even further, so muted that even a virtual stranger should be able to recognize it’s fake. Lexa smirks.

“Does she have a name,” he asks Lexa, not taking his eyes off Clarke.

“Yeah. She has a voice, too,” Lexa tells him.

“Cage Wallace,” he says, offering a hand to Clarke.

Clarke looks at Lexa before she accepts Cage’s hand, then releases it in about two seconds and says, “Clarke Griffin.”

“Your mother says a lot of things,” Lexa reminds her cousin, “but Clarke isn’t my _special friend_.”

“Right,” he drawls, “she said you lectured her about not calling you a _homosexual_ , anymore. I guess _special friends_ are out now, too. Girlfriend, then?”

“Girlfriend would be the appropriate term,” Clarke interjects, folding her arms in front of herself. Lexa’s eyes cut over to the blonde, confused in the brief moment that passes before she adds, “Generally speaking, I mean. Lexa and I are best friends, but, hypothetically, if we were dating,” she looks quickly at Lexa, “or, if any two women were dating, you’d call them girlfriends. Which we are not.”

“Best friends, not girlfriends,” Lexa simplifies, because, somehow, that’s still where they are, even though Lexa thinks Clarke’s especially cute when she’s inexplicably flustered.

Cage lights up at that.

“So, you’re single?”

Clarke splutters out something like a laugh and widens her eyes at Lexa.

“She’s off-limits and too good for you,” Lexa growls. Cage narrows his eyes at Lexa as his mouth twists into another smile.

“She has a voice, Lexa,” he echoes, holding the brunette’s gaze with that damn smile. “But, what kind of cousin would I be if I tried my luck with your stunning friend?”

Something in the set of Cage’s eyes tells Lexa that he’s absolutely going to try his luck with Clarke, but probably not until she’s out of Lexa’s sight. In her few visits to this house, she and Cage have had some good times and some bad, but they’ve always had similar taste. Lexa would find a toy, Cage would try to snatch it from her hands. Cage would start a book, Lexa would read it aloud over his shoulder until he was annoyed enough to surrender it. Of course, he’d have his shifty eye on Clarke, too.

“An asshole cousin,” Lexa tells him, “and an unlucky one.”

He smirks again, then looks at Clarke when he says, “You’re probably right.”

“She’s _definitely_ right,” Clarke stresses, making him blush even as he laughs at himself.

Lexa can barely contain her smile.

“It was worth a thought, at least,” he says, stepping aside to let the women in.

When they’re just on the other side of the now closed door, he surprises Lexa by pulling her into a loose hug and says, “Sorry about Titus, by the way.”

She and Cage haven’t hugged since they were teenagers, ordered to do so by their mothers.

“Thanks,” Lexa says, because she doesn’t know how to translate a noncommittal shrug and a grimace into words.

“He was an asshole,” Cage says, “but he was our asshole.”

Clarke snorts, and Lexa knows it’s because she’s relieved to have at least one person acknowledge the asshole part.

Lexa laughs, too, even though, at this point in her life, Titus doesn’t feel much like hers. After a few years of learning to live without so much as thinking of someone, the claim fades away. Even biology is dwarfed by space and time and quietly simmering animosity.

She might be able to say the same thing about Cage, though, as long as he stays far away from Clarke.

“Please tell me you’re giving the eulogy,” Lexa jokes.

“I wish,” Cage says, “but _someone_ has been waiting her whole life for an opportunity like this.”

“I think you’re exaggerating, but I honestly can’t tell,” Clarke says, looking quickly between Lexa and her cousin.

All the brunette can do is shrug. Diana _does_ enjoy being the center of attention, and, from what Lexa remembers, she was in rare form at both her parents’ funerals.

The three of them are huddled conspiratorially just inside the front door when Diana appears at the top of the steps in another unnecessary apron, this time over a dark dress. She clears her throat, as though something is caught in it, but Lexa suspects she just wanted a captive audience to watch her descend the staircase like a poorly aged debutante.

“Anybody’s guess, at this point,” Cage admits, “but, if I die young, just bury me in underneath the old sandbox out back and don’t mention it.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Lexa says.

“I hope you’re not antagonizing these young ladies, Cage,” Diana says too pleasantly when she’s reached the bottom of the steps.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Mother. The rainbow brigade, here, was just telling me how Clarke isn’t Lexa’s _special friend_.”

Diana gives her youngest son a severe smile, one that leaves her eyes looking wide and ghastly. She cocks her head ever so slightly, and Lexa might be burying Cage in the backyard before they can even get through the funeral.

“Lovely,” Diana says, tight smile frozen in place, “Now, why don’t you get back to moving the furniture. Your father and brother are still at the store and we have yet to get the parlor ready for the viewing.”

“Sure,” he says, offering up his own forced smile and backing away from the women, “I just love heavy lifting.”

“Mind the wood floors, dear,” Diana calls out as he disappears around the corner. She turns her attention to Clarke and says, “Don’t mind my son. He just likes attention.”

Clarke just smiles along and defers to Lexa as Diana dives into a small, but dizzying list of things they’ll need to do before the funeral directors and guests arrive. When they have their agenda laid out, Diana starts leading them toward the kitchen. Lexa and Clarke both fall into step for the first few seconds, before Diana is turning around and looking at Lexa curiously.

“Clarke and I can get a jumpstart on things down here, Lexa.”

“Then, where do you want me to start,” Lexa asks, bewildered. It took almost all of her willpower, but she actually listened when Diana was talking, and she’s pretty sure the woman just listed all the things she wanted done.

“This might be a nice time to say ‘hello’ to your sister, dear. She’s up in the yellow room. You remember—”

“I remember the yellow room,” Lexa says, “but, shouldn’t you introduce us or something? So, she doesn’t think I’m some creepy stranger?”

She looks to Clarke for back-up, but the blonde just shrugs.

“That shouldn’t be necessary. She won’t think you’re a ‘creepy stranger’, Lexa. Madi knows who you are.”

Diana says it so flippantly, like Lexa would have ever imagined, in a million years, that the sister she knows nothing about, the girl who’s face Lexa’s imagination can’t seem to conjure up, would know who she is.

“She does,” Clarke asks, saving Lexa the trouble.

“She does, and she’s excited to see you,” Diana confirms, wrapping a small, but firm, hand around Lexa’s forearm, “For all of my brother’s apparent failures to keep you updated on his life, he stayed as informed as he could about yours. Madi’s seen pictures of you, Lexa. She’s heard stories, too. Your father made sure she knows who you are.”

Clarke bites her lip when she looks at Lexa, but she doesn’t move to touch her. Diana’s hand rests, too warm on the brunette’s arm.

All kind of feelings swirl around inside Lexa, and she isn’t sure which is the biggest or the strongest.

Anger wells up first, at the thought of Titus invading her privacy, creeping in through unsecured cracks in her social media like Diana, soaking up details he hadn’t earned and squeezing them out into this kid. Then comes frustration. If Diana were a phone call away rather than right here, smiling in Lexa’s face, if Lexa and Clarke were alone, maybe Lexa would be able to talk it out instead of getting all stuck in her own head. Next, sadness, because Titus was interested enough to keep up with her life like a spectator sport, but not enough to participate. After that, a weird sort of relief floods her; relief that, at least, he got to see that she was okay without him, whether she wanted to be or had to be.

All the relief gets replaced with fear. Fear that, because Titus didn’t know Lexa, because he _couldn’t_ have known Lexa, he might’ve told Madi the wrong things. There’s a girl upstairs who thinks she knows Lexa, and Lexa’s afraid of letting her down.

If she thinks too hard about it, Lexa will never make it up those stairs.

Tense silence comes to an end when Lexa forces herself to snap back into the moment. A little girl is upstairs, and her parents are dead, and Lexa doesn’t have a shred of orphan wisdom to offer, but she can be there. She doesn’t know Madi, and Madi thinks she knows Lexa, and it’s all very daunting and it reminds Lexa of the father she’ll be burying tomorrow, but she can be there.

“Okay,” Lexa says, “I’ll, uh, okay.” She keeps nodding, as she walks away from the other two, nodding when Clarke reminds that she’s a shout away if she needs her, and when neither of them have anything left to say. She’s still nodding to herself at the bottom of the staircase.

Lexa looked up to Titus once, when she didn’t know any better, and he was almost never there for her. He wasn’t some steady physical presence, like Clarke’s dad. For most of Lexa’s childhood, he was a disembodied voice on the telephone, a face in a photo album, a character in the fairy tale Lexa wished her life could be.

She takes a deep breath as a low heel clicks against the first step.

He wasn’t even there, and she adored him.

She holds that breath until she’s all the way to the top.

Lexa doesn’t know Madi, even if the kid thinks otherwise, but she can be there. 

She takes another when she turns left, heading toward the yellow room, the one with all the sunflower-patterned trinkets.

Just being there is more than Titus ever did for her.

She lets it out a few paces from the open door.

Just being there will be enough.

Lexa knocks lightly on the doorframe, tries to control the shaking of her hands, and presses forward.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lexa makes the handful of seconds before she crosses into the yellow room last for as long as she can. Even with her knuckles tapping on the frame of the door, she feels the most compelling urge to do an about face, to run back down those stairs, to grab Clarke, and run right out the door, back down the driveway, all the way home. She doesn’t even know if she’d stop running then.

Lexa makes the handful of seconds before she crosses into the yellow room last for as long as she can. Even with her knuckles tapping on the frame of the door, she feels the most compelling urge to do an about face, to run back down those stairs, to grab Clarke, and run right out the door, back down the driveway, all the way home. She doesn’t even know if she’d stop running then.

In the days she’s had to wrap her head around this, around a dead father and a dead stepmother and a sister who’s still very much alive, Lexa’s tried to picture Madi. She’s wracked her brain, imagining this person who shares half her genes and none of her memories, but nothing really works. There’s this amorphous blank spot where a girl should be, and it ebbs and grows and shrinks with each new thought in Lexa’s head. Madi could be a drooling toddler, or she could be a sullen tween, or she could be neither.

Lexa’s brain works to exhaustion, even when she wishes it would stop, and still it comes up short.

She’s done everything shy of asking Diana, actually, and that’s only because asking seemed so far out of the question. Diana is so removed from the everyday shuffle of Lexa’s life that she couldn’t imagine using the woman to fill in this huge gap.

Uncertainty isn’t new for Lexa. Her whole relationship with Titus, past and present is shrouded in it. Lexa can count on one hand the number of time she’s been able to confidently answer a question of what her father does. It wasn’t abnormal for her as a kid, only hearing his voice every few months over a quietly crackling phone line. She’s gone years at a time without seeing his face outside of a photograph.

She’s used to not knowing things about Titus, but this feels so different.

Lexa couldn’t have predicted the trajectory of her relationship with her father. She couldn’t have anticipated the clear, defined chasm that would grow from a quietly fractured bond. Even as she got older, even as she lived through what would end up being the last time they spoke, after disillusionment had set into her bones and her mind and her heart, she couldn’t have expected this.

The list of things that Titus could’ve been keeping from Lexa has always been long, and it hasn’t felt surprising in a decade, but there’s an unexpected sting in this. Last she heard, he was putting down roots on the West Coast, far away and unreachable as always, presumably avoiding one family, but not creating a whole new one.

It’s been a long time since Lexa felt a sense of entitlement to the details of her father’s life, but this isn’t just about him.

Titus made a family. He was raising a whole human being out there, and he didn’t so much as reach out to let Lexa know. Now it’s Lexa’s job, Lexa the adult, Lexa the daughter he didn’t raise, to reach out to this girl, to bridge a gap she never would’ve allowed.

Titus made this whole other person, and he kept her so separate from Lexa that she won’t be surprised if Madi feels about her the way she felt about Titus once. She wants to believe that being there now will make all the difference, but Lexa is still aware of what it feels like, knowing someone who should want to know you doesn’t, and she doesn’t know what she’ll do if Titus’ choice has left Madi feeling what Lexa felt all those years ago.

And she can’t even prepare herself, because the only thing she knows about Madi is that she’s an orphan.

It may not be surprising, exactly, but it really sucks.

It gnaws at Lexa in the seconds that stretch between her knuckles falling from the doorframe and a heel stepping onto the sun-bleached wood floor of the yellow room. She can’t tell if the discomfort, the physical sensation that settles into her gut, is holding her back or pushing her forward, but it won’t let her freeze herself into this moment that she wishes she could cling to.

When Lexa can’t make the seconds stretch any further, she lets herself cross completely into the room.

It’s just as Lexa remembers from all those years ago.

There’s a twin bed pushed against the patterned wallpaper, with a white wooden frame and pale, yellow bedding. The bedside table and dresser match the bed, white wood intentionally worn along the edges to look more rustic.

Lexa remembers that Titus’ father hand painted the small sunflowers on each piece of furniture that break up the whiteness of it all.

She remembers the ugly vase full of fake flowers on the bedside table and the flower-patterned curtains on the windows, and the large, brown rug smack in the middle of the floor, and the ceramic jewelry box on the dresser and the floor lamp with the white shade in the corner.

She remembers her mother staying in this room. Long after her parents realized how wrong they were for each other, but before Lexa could grasp the magnitude of that incompatibility. Back when having her parents in one place was a rare delight, something to look forward to, instead of something to dread.

She remembers the hard-backed wooden chair in the corner, the one that never quite matched the rest of the furniture. She remembers her mother settling into that chair, lifting a six-year-old Lexa into her lap, holding Anya just as close, soothing away the tears Titus’ mother put in their eyes. If she closes her eyes, Lexa can probably see her mother’s cheek resting on Anya’s head, the purse of her lips as she whispers reassurances and careful apologies that weren’t hers to make.

Lexa doesn’t close her eyes, though. The memories that shake free in this mostly unchanged room pale in comparison to the girl occupying it right now.

She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the chair, her upper body contorted to look to the doorway. Bright, green eyes lock onto Lexa, not expectant or angry or annoyed at the interruption, just wide and curious.

She isn’t a drooling toddler, and she isn’t a sullen teenager. She’s young, even younger than Lexa was in the memory she refuses to indulge, but old enough to be sitting here, alone, oversized crayons littering the carpet around her, coloring book open on the seat of the chair.

“Hi,” Lexa says, a little stiffly, “I’m Lexa.”

The little face staring up at her spreads into a chubby-cheeked smile that brings out the tiny cleft in her chin.

“I know,” Madi shrugs, as though it’s ridiculous of Lexa to assume she wouldn’t.

Lexa starts to feel the way she did in the car, on the drive here. She starts to feel like she’s floating, like the only way her body is going to cross the ten-foot gap separating her from Madi is by accident or divine intervention.

For as much as Lexa has worried about bridging some invisible gap between her and Madi, she hasn’t spared a thought for the how of it.

There’s this gentle prickling sensation setting in all over her body, not painful, exactly, but a little scary when paired with the coldness she feels in her hands and her face. It feels like one of her limbs has fallen asleep, except the feeling is infecting her whole body.

She’s cold and floaty and anxious, and this little girl with unruly, brown hair is still smiling up at her.

Clarke is only a shout away, and Lexa is seconds from caving, from making that shout, from asking her best friend to talk her through this unwelcome _thing_ she’s feeling, when Madi speaks again.

“Wanna color?”

Now that curiosity looks a lot more like hope. Madi’s face is open and round, two small, untamed eyebrows high on her forehead. 

Lexa is almost confused at the request, and then the little girl is rising ungracefully, crossing the room, and pressing an orange crayon into Lexa’s hand. Lexa looks down, tries to focus on the large, three-sided crayon cradled loosely in her palm, framed by her own shaky fingers.

When Lexa doesn’t respond, Madi surprises her by slipping a tiny, warm hand into Lexa’s left, and tugging her further into the room.

“C’mon,” she says, until Lexa’s feet are cooperating, following her onto the rug, where Madi stops guiding Lexa forward and starts pulling her down. The tiny spot of warmth left behind when Madi lets her go feels almost as foreign as the cold of everything else.

Lexa sits, tucking both legs to one side of herself while the girl grabs her coloring book and drops it onto the floor, then she turns around and does the same with the rest of the crayons, rolling and tossing and sliding them across the surface of the rug so that they collide gently with Lexa’s legs and knees, or miss her completely, but land within her reach. When she’s moved everything, Madi sits facing Lexa, crossing her legs again, this time with the coloring book between them, upside down, the way Lexa sees it.

Those little hands busy themselves with flipping pages in the book, until they stop on two pages that haven’t been scribbled on yet.

On one page, there’s a monkey in sunglasses driving a car. On the other, an alligator stands in front of a mirror adjusting its tie.

“You color this one, okay,” Madi tells her, slapping a hand down on the alligator, “and I’ll do that.”

Lexa feels like she’s dreaming again, like the strangeness of this moment is too great and overwhelming to be real, but she obeys the girl in front of her. Lexa forces her hand to close more tightly around the orange crayon until her muscles come back to life enough to drag it along the frame of the mirror.

Across from her, Madi holds a crayon in each fist, waiting for Lexa’s first move before using either of them. When Lexa starts moving her orange, Madi starts scribbling with the green in her right hand. She moves fast, with no regard for lines, until a big blob in the center of her page is filled in, and then she does the same thing with the red in her left hand.

Lexa colors neatly in the lines while the girl opposite her uses and discards all the available colors in minutes, both hands flying at once, sometimes. She’s so animated, when she gets into it, that she makes this weird sound, this loud, staccato purring that reminds Lexa of a racecar more than a small child.

That, more than anything, snaps Lexa’s mind away from the prickling of her limbs and grounds her in this reality that is far too bizarre to be a dream.  
Madi scrunches her little face up and tilts her head differently based on which hand is moving, or sits up straighter to employ both at once, and she’s the strangest thing Lexa has ever seen.

Wisps of hair fall in front of Madi’s eyes, and she hardly notices them. She doesn’t blow them out of her face or still her hands long enough to push them away. She just lowers her head and makes her noises and works until the whole page, the monkey and the sunglasses and the car and the entire background is a mosaic of deeply concentrated colors, a grid of red and blue and green and everything else except for the orange that still rests in Lexa’s hand.

“Done,” Madi says, tossing the last of her arsenal onto the carpet next to Lexa and looking at the comparative blankness of the alligator and its tie.

Bushy little brows furrow down at the picture and then they’re lifted in confusion at Lexa.

“You color slow,” Madi tells her, a pout forming on her lips, “Need help?”

For the first time since she introduced herself, Lexa finds her voice.

“Sure.”

It isn’t much, but it’s enough to have Madi’s pout evening back into a smile, the bright little pearls of her baby teeth shining at Lexa for just a second, before she’s picking up two more crayons and making Lexa’s page look just like hers.

“How old are you, Madi,” Lexa asks, while the girl scrapes the black crayon over part of the alligator’s tail.

“Four,” she says easily, without even looking up, “but I’m gonna be five.”

She’s using the purple when Lexa asks, “When’s your birthday?”

“August sixteenth,” she says, but she drags out the words, stretching her little face, puckering her lips, and tilting her head dramatically over each syllable. “Guess what?”

“What?”

“I goin’ to kindergarten.”

“Wow,” Lexa says, trying to infuse her voice with enthusiasm fit for the kid in front of her. “Are you excited?”

“Uh-huh. I like school.”

It’s not like Lexa hasn’t been around children before—she’s met plenty of children, even babysat occasionally when she was in her teens—but something about talking to Madi, even just making polite conversation, feels scary and unnatural. It’s easier to observe her than to engage with her.

Lexa should want to know what her sister is excited for about school, or what she does when she isn’t flying through coloring books, or what her favorite food is, because they’re all things she’s been wondering about, even if she couldn’t put a face to the wondering. Instead, she can’t find it in herself to ask.

There’s nothing overtly frightening about the tiny person in front her, well, nothing except the wildness of her scribbling limbs, but Lexa’s kind of terrified.

None of Lexa’s long list of expectations felt concrete, but Madi has somehow managed to defy them all. She seems so normal. Happy, even. She seems unbothered by the oddness of meeting her nervous older sister for the first time, unaware of the gap of unfamiliarity that’s been keeping that sister up at night, untouched by the sadness Lexa tried to brace herself for. Lexa doesn’t want any of that to change, and, even more, she doesn’t want to be the person changing it, so she doesn’t say anything more while Madi finishes her work.

Minutes melt away, and the kid wears overworked crayons down into nubs, and Lexa just watches.

“Done,” Madi says again, throwing down all her colors and smiling at her own handiwork. This time she spins the coloring book around, so Lexa can see the images right side up, and asks, “Do you like it?”

Now, Lexa sees the expectancy she expected earlier, a little waver in that smile, a little apprehension in those eyes.

“I love it,” she says, offering a smile for good measure.

Madi beams at her, and then she says, “Daddy says I’m a artist.”

It takes a mountain of effort for Lexa to keep her smile from slipping away, but she manages. Two things occur to her simultaneously: one, Madi probably has a ton of good memories of Titus, and Lexa probably can’t relate to any of them; two, she has no idea whether Madi understands what’s happening right now, why she’s been taken from her home and deposited in this yellow room, or where her parents have gone.

“Wanna do another one?”

Lexa could say yes, she could sit here for a while longer with rough fabric digging into her bare knee, watching Madi color, committing to memory a sight she couldn’t imagine this morning, soaking up the comfort of a calm, smiling kid who probably doesn’t understand how much her life’s about to change. She could give herself a few more minutes to be sure she’s worked her way past prickling limbs and cold dread, but the discomfort of being up here, alone with this tiny stranger, trapped between shreds of her past and a darkly looming future, hasn’t quite worn off.

Lexa thinks she’d rather take orders from Diana than let this moment drag on.

“I think I’m going to go see if Diana needs any help,” Lexa says, trying to preserve her smile a little while longer.

“How come you don’t call her ‘Aunt Diana’,” Madi asks, frowning and tilting her head just so. The way her hair flops to the side sort of makes her look like a confused puppy.

Lexa’s smile is genuine for a few seconds while she tries to think of an explanation that Madi isn’t too young to understand. When one doesn’t come, Lexa settles for the tried-and-true, “I’m a grown up,” and shrugs.

“Wow,” Madi says, mouth and eyes both wide, “I wish I was a grown up.”

“Well, I wish I was a little kid,” Lexa tells her, because she wishes she could be as blissfully clueless as this little girl.

Madi giggles and says, “You’re too big and I’m too little.”

“I guess we are,” Lexa agrees.

She starts to gather herself up, using considerably more effort to get her twenty-five-year-old body off the ground than Madi had, and the little girl just watches her. The amusement that was just in her eyes starts to taper off into a small frown when she looks back at her coloring book.

“Can I help, too,” she asks Lexa.

“Don’t you want to color,” Lexa asks her.

“This is boring,” Madi says suddenly, closing the book on her work with a sigh.

Lexa looks around the room as she dusts off her dress. The yellow room has changed so little since she last saw it, and the only additions beside Madi and her coloring book are a purple backpack, a hair brush on the bedside table, and single stuffed animal sagging against a pillow.

There aren’t any other toys in sight, and, when she visited as a kid, Lexa’s only saving grace in this house was having Anya and her cousins to entertain her. She may not be able to protect the kid from sadness or awkwardness, but she can try to stave off a little of her boredom.

“Why don’t you come along and we’ll see if we can find a job for you to do?”

“Really,” Madi asks, lighting up.

“Really,” Lexa promises.

That’s all it takes for the girl to bounce back up to her feet and follow Lexa out of the yellow room.

Lexa’s back at the top of the stairs, about to start her descent when Madi catches hold of her elbow and stops her. The girl looks over Lexa’s shoulder toward the stairs and then down at her feet and she sighs.

“Aunt Diana said I have to stay upstairs.”

Lexa blinks down at the cowed child in front her and remembers that being a kid isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. She wants to channel Anya for a second, and encourage Madi into the sort of rebellion that had Anya effectively making her own rules during each visit under Diana’s roof, but she doesn’t.  
Instead, she stoops down until she’s low enough to catch Madi’s eyes and asks, “Guess what?”

“What,” Madi asks, looking at Lexa through her lashes.

“I’m a grown-up,” Lexa reminds her, “and I say you can come downstairs.”

One more flash of awe crosses Madi’s face, and then she’s smiling again, surprising Lexa one more time by slipping her hand around Lexa’s and leading her back down the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Piece by piece, we will get through this story.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lots of introductions are made on the day of Titus and Sienna's wake, and not all of them go well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm quickly realizing about myself that I can do things quickly or I can do them well, but probs not both at the same time, so I'm sorry in advance if I leave you hanging for another three weeks. I really thought writing multiple stories at once was a good idea at some point???
> 
> Past me has all kinds of weird ideas.
> 
> As always, thanks for reading, and especially for commenting!

If Lexa wasn’t already (secretly) in love with Clarke, she’d fall all over again with just a glance at the blonde’s face when Madi leads the two of them into the kitchen. It’s not a look, exactly, because it’s never just one look with Clarke. It’s something of a journey, one that Clarke’s face navigates even if her body doesn’t, one that Lexa often finds herself watching in rapt attention.

First, there’s Clarke’s pained, but pleasant, listening face holding strong against Diana’s monologue of the moment as they stir two punch bowls on opposite sides of the marble-topped island, although Lexa wouldn’t be surprised if the woman hasn’t allowed Clarke to get in more than a few words of her own. Clarke’s mouth is curved into a polite smile, but it’s too steady to be natural. She nods as Lexa’s aunt goes on and on, undeterred by Diana’s changing inflection, the sips of wine she takes between sentences, the periodic splashes of the sliced fruit Diana deposits into her bowl, but isn’t nearly as animated or attentive as she’d be if she was enjoying whatever the woman had to say.

That look drops and is promptly replaced with relief when Clarke catches sight of Lexa in the doorway. That polite smile gets a little bigger, tight shoulders relax, blue eyes flare in mock-warning, as though Lexa doesn’t remember what her aunt is like. Clarke’s hands don’t pause, still mixing whatever punch she’s been tasked with brewing, but her eyes are glued to Lexa for a long second, and that, more than anything, grounds the brunette in this moment.

Those eyes land on Madi, who seems far shyer under the blonde’s observation than she had been under Lexa’s, next, as though Clarke didn’t think to look for the child at Lexa’s side. The little girl clings tighter to Lexa’s hand, even as she stays a couple steps back. It’s awkward for the older brunette when, in any other situation she’d be going straight up to Clarke, but Madi lingers in the doorway, holding her just out of reach.

The relief on Clarke’s face gives way to wide-eyed shock. She looks at Madi as intently as she looked at Lexa seconds ago, then back to Lexa. Her eyebrows scrunch, and then unscrunch as quickly. Her mouth opens, as though she’s going to say something, but closes around air. Her hand finally stills. Lexa wonders if Clarke feels like she had up in the yellow room, like this is all too bizarre to be real.

But, Clarke surprises her. And, really, after twenty years, if there’s anything she shouldn’t be surprised by, it’s Clarke sizing up a situation in one minute or less, and figuring out exactly how to make it better.

Every part of this trip, being hours away from seeing the coffin Titus will be buried in and dealing with relatives who she hasn’t seen in years and meeting the kid who’s practically hiding in her shadow right now, has been strange and stressful and overwhelming. She’s barely had a moment of peace, barely enough time to catch her breath or formulate a thought that doesn’t make her feel confused or angry or hurt. But every good moment she’s found, every bit of peace, has something to do with Clarke. The blonde just looks at her, and Lexa remembers that she isn’t in this alone.

Anya may be overseas, and the rest of her friends at home, but Clarke is right here, making the hard moments a little better.

This time, she takes a few seconds to stare at Lexa, then at Madi, then their joined hands, then at Lexa again, and she shakes off the shock. She pushes past a flash of concern, which Lexa supposes is for her, and she rolls right into a real, bona fide Clarke Griffin smile, the kind that’s warm and bright and positively magnetic. She rests the spoon on the edge of her punch bowl, wipes her hands on a kitchen towel, and walks right over to Lexa and Madi, finally alerting Diana to the presence of both her nieces.

She squeezes Lexa’s free wrist, just once, when she’s close enough, and then she’s blatantly ignoring Diana’s clipped, _I thought you were playing upstairs, Madi_ , and sinking down to one knee in front of the girl.

“Well, you must be Madi,” Clarke says, folding her arms over a thigh.

Lexa looks back to see the girl nodding.

“I’m Clarke,” the blonde tells her, “Lexa’s friend.”

“Clarke drove here with me,” Lexa adds.

Madi looks up at Lexa, then at Clarke, and offers a wave. Neither of them miss the tentative step forward she makes.

“You can shake Clarke’s hand, _Madison_ ,” Diana says from her spot at the kitchen island, “Don’t be rude, sweetheart.”

“That’s okay,” Clarke smiles at the younger brunette when she squeezes the hand in Lexa’s tighter and buries the other in her pocket, “Do you want to know a secret?”

Madi nods again, finally looking right at Clarke.

“I was about your age when I met Lexa, and she was pretty shy, too, just like you.”

“Really,” Madi asks, wide eyes on Lexa, who grins down at the kid.

“Really,” she says, and then that smile gets pointed in Lexa’s direction, “And now, we’re friends.”

“Best friends,” Lexa reminds her, smiling back just as broadly.

Lexa doesn’t know why it works, not any more than she knows why the little girl attached to her has been so comfortable clinging on to her outstretched hand, but Clarke’s easy smile, or the way she gets down on Madi’s level, or the fact that she’s such an important person in Lexa’s life seems to put the kid at ease. She takes another tentative step forward, until she’s at Lexa’s side, just in front of Clarke, and slips her right hand out of Lexa’s to extend it to Clarke.

The blonde gently takes the girl’s hand in her own, and says, “Nice to meet you, Madi.”

And when Madi smiles at Clarke, still a little shy, maybe, Lexa smiles at them both, because, even if she would’ve been able to picture this meeting, she wouldn’t have been able to picture it like this. She wouldn’t have been able to predict how oddly touching it is to have Clarke making this sort of effort to endear herself to the sister she only met today.

Lexa hasn’t had much time to digest the idea of having a little sister who hasn’t even started kindergarten yet. She doesn’t know how she’ll navigate being in this kid’s life, or how they’ll make up for the time they’ve already missed out on. She’s sure there are plenty of important things she hasn’t contemplated yet, but having Clarke meet Madi feels important.

“All right, girls, I’m so pleased that introductions have been made,” Diana interrupts, still stirring her punch bowl, “but we’ve got a few things to take care of, so why don’t you head back to your room, Madi.”

“But Lexa said I could stay,” the little girl argues. Her smile slips into a pout, and she looks at Lexa expectantly while Clarke rises back to her full height.

Lexa’s a grown-up. She’s a fully-grown adult with a job and a car and unpaid student loans, but when her aunt hits her with the _Are you sure about that_ face, the one where her thready, dark brows creep up on her forehead and thin lips pull into a straight line and her head cocks ever-so-slightly to the side, she almost forgets.

Then she considers Anya, who’s never made it through a visit with Diana and her family without getting that face at least twice. She remembers that her older sister’s never had any trouble ignoring it.

Lexa channels as much of Anya’s fearlessness as she can without losing sight of her own tact, and says, “Like you said, we have plenty of work to do. Madi wants to help, and I told her she could. Will that be a problem?”

There’s a moment of silence, presumably a moment long enough for Diana to decide it isn’t worth arguing with either of her nieces, especially when the younger one looks to her with watery puppy dog eyes and a slight quiver to go with the pout of her lip, and then Diana sighs.

“Okay, then,” Diana says, “I’m sure we can find something for you.”

They end up agreeing to let Madi sweep all the downstairs rooms. Diana hands the girl a broom nearly twice her height along with reminders to be careful and to stay out of Cage’s way in the parlor, and Lexa thinks it might’ve been a terrible idea as soon as the little girl starts skipping off with a giant smile, broom dragging behind her.

“No running, Madison,” Diana calls out after her, and neither Lexa nor Clarke miss the immediate, but thankfully muted, crash and a quick, _I’m okay, and I’m not running_ shouted from another room.

“Skipping isn’t running,” Lexa agrees under her breath, but apparently not quietly enough, because Clarke laughs while Diana scoffs.

“Might as well be,” Diana challenges.

“She’s so enthusiastic, though” Lexa says, when she hears both Cage groaning in the parlor and Madi belting her own sweeping theme song, which consists entirely of her singing _I’m a little sweeper_ to herself over and over.

“She’s a little sweeper,” Clarke says, putting aside her punch bowl to wipe down the countertops when Diana directs her to, “that’s adorable.”

Like clockwork, there’s another muted thud, and another groan from Cage. Clarke pulls her lips into a straight line, and widens her eyes at Lexa again, but this time there’s a hint of laughter behind the expression.

“If anything breaks—” Lexa’s aunt starts ominously, wine glass in hand, but Lexa’s anticipating it and offers, “I will take full responsibility, and reimburse you in full.”

She’s a little quieter this time when she adds _unless it’s expensive_ under her breath. Diana narrows her eyes, but gives her niece her first genuine smile of the day, even if she’s almost definitely trying to conceal it.

“Don’t think that little girl has helped you wiggle your way out of pulling your weight,” Diana warns her.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Lexa promises, “So, should I grab another punch bowl, or—”

“You’ve got dusting duty, and you’re grown, now, so no skipping the high shelves.”

“I hate dusting,” Lexa whines, because she has always hated dusting, and will always hate dusting. She sets her sights on the blonde with the soapy sponge in her hands, and tries, “Hey, Clarke—”

“Sorry, can’t trade now. I’m a little counter scrubber,” Clarke shrugs with a grin.

“You know where the dusting cloths are,” Diana tells her, “And make sure you—”

“Get under the knick-knacks, I know,” Lexa grumbles, fleetingly wondering whether this might be one more job Madi’ll enjoy.

 

 

“So, what do you think of her,” Clarke asks when the two of them are alone in Lexa’s uncle’s office.

It didn’t take Clarke long to finish scrubbing the counters, and, according to the blonde, she was barely even done before Diana was releasing her with a, _Well, go on, then. I’m sure Lexa’s off-task without you_. The brunette had booked it straight for the office, because Madi was in the library, Cage in the parlor, and the music room seemed like the exact place a busy body of a little girl would flutter into next, and Clarke had found her there, spinning around aimlessly in a stately desk chair.

Now, Clarke lifts objects, one-by-one, while Lexa drags a lint-free cloth along shelves that are basically dust-free and most likely going to remain unseen by the average guest.

“She’s my aunt, Clarke, it doesn’t really matter what I think of her,” Lexa says, swiping under the ceramic mountain paperweight.

Clarke fixes her with a look. “Seriously, Lex.”

Lexa knows what she meant, but what can she say?

“She’s my sister, I guess. Still doesn’t really matter what I think.”

“That’s not true,” Clarke tells her, “She’s so young. Did you know she was that young?”

“I knew about as much as you did,” Lexa reminds her. She blows dust off her uncle’s clunky, old keyboard while Clarke slouches against his desk inches away.

“She’s a cutie,” the blonde says, “all that hair, and those cheeks.”

“Yeah, I’m glad she didn’t get the balding gene from Titus,” Lexa says, brushing off the old desktop monitor.

“You both lucked out on that.”

“There’s still time,” Lexa jokes, earning an eye roll from Clarke.

“It’s just so weird, right? She’s a whole person,” the blonde says, standing from the desk when Lexa moves to the bookshelf, “she’s a little sweeper.”

“She’s almost five,” Lexa says, “Her birthday’s in August and she’s excited for kindergarten.”

“God,” Clarke starts, lifting what Lexa knows to be an antique clock from the top shelf, “she’s practically a baby.”

Lexa sweeps her cloth haphazardly under it and sighs.

“And her parents are dead.”

“Yeah,” Clarke frowns, carefully lowering the clock into its space, “they are.”

She gives Lexa another of those long looks, but it doesn’t feel as comforting as earlier. This face, this furrowed brow and down-turned lip look, is Clarke’s way of asking Lexa a question she still doesn’t have an answer for.

This face is just a non-verbal _how are you_.

Lexa breaks eye contact with Clarke and sweeps her cloth along the rest of the shelf, not bothering to move the books.

Clarke’s left hand covers Lexa’s right, effectively stopping her movements, and Lexa looks at the other woman again.

“Can we just get through this day,” Lexa asks, “Just today and tomorrow, and then, I promise, I’ll talk about it. I’ll talk the whole way home, if you want.”

“I’m not trying to push,” Clarke promises, “This just seems like a lot.”

“It is,” Lexa sighs, “It’s a lot. I’m dealing, though. Having you here helps.”

She doesn't know if Clarke fully understands how much it helps, but it really, really does.

“Like I’d be anywhere else,” Clarke says, pulling her hand back.

The office is relatively small, and Lexa was right in assuming there was hardly a speck of dust to be found, so it isn’t long before she’s reaching for door they left slightly ajar. Clarke stops her though, with a gentle hand pressed against dark wood.

“Before we go back out there,” Clarke starts in a hushed voice, “what’s going to happen to her when we leave?”

“I don’t know,” Lexa shrugs, “I mean, she’s here now, so, I guess she’ll be staying.”

“Isn’t Diana a little bit of a—” Clarke trails off with a grimace, so Lexa supplies, “functioning alcoholic?”

The blonde nods.

“Last I checked, yeah. My uncle’s okay, though,” Lexa says, thinking of one the only people she isn’t actively dreading seeing. “Even if he is a hundred years old.”

“He’s not a hundred,” Clarke chastises.

“Damn close. He’s been old since before _we_ were born,” Lexa snorts, and then she has an awful thought, “Oh, god, what if he dies, too? He’s one of very few normal people in Titus’ family.”

“Not funny,” Clarke grimaces.

“Not joking. I haven’t seen him in years, Clarke. He emails on birthdays, and that’s about it. He could be close to death. Actually, I’m asking Cage,” Lexa says, brushing Clarke’s hand from the door so she can slip out to find her cousin.

“You can’t just ask your cousin if his dad’s dying, Lexa,” Clarke whisper-shouts in the hall.

“Mine _just_ died. I’ll be delicate,” Lexa tosses over her shoulder, breezing past dated, sepia-toned photos of relatives she can’t name and sprawling potted plants, “I just want to know if he was born before or after prohibition.”

“This is why I can’t take you places,” Clarke chastises, but Lexa can hear the laugh in her voice.

Before she can track Cage down, the front door swings open. Lexa practically skids to a stop on the rug as Cage’s older brother charges in, carrying a couple packs of bottled water.

“Oh, you’re here,” Carl says plainly, not stopping for longer than it takes to get a look at Lexa on his way to the kitchen, “Good. There are more bags in the car.”

There’s a loud clattering in a far-off room, then the quick steps of an eager little girl _not running_ to the door just as Lexa’s uncle appears in it, weighed down by several straining plastic bags.

“He’s spry enough to carry bags, at least,” Clarke whispers into Lexa’s ear from behind her before he notices them.

“Let me help you, Uncle Grandpa,” Madi practically shouts at him, and Lexa frowns even while Dante just laughs and says _Still not your grandpa_ in the amused voice of a man who has told her this several times.

“But you’re really old,” Madi says, in what seems to be genuine confusion, “too old to be my uncle.”

Lexa snorts, because Dante _is_ older than she remembers, and she almost turns right around and says _I told you so_ to Clarke, because she’s clearly not the only person to recognize his age.

Dante sees them then, and his smile brings out the deep wrinkles in the pale skin around his eyes.

“Welcome home, Lexa,” he says, allowing Madi to wrestle a couple of bags out of one of his wizened hands. She promptly drops both of them, then looks quickly from Dante to Lexa to Clarke, as though she really believes any of the adults in the room could’ve missed it, blushes, and then picks them both back up. He barely misses a beat adding, “I wish it were under better circumstances.”

“Me too,” Lexa agrees.

“Do you know Clarke, Uncle Grandpa,” Madi asks seriously, bags making her little shoulders droop as she stands in the entryway, “She’s Lexa’s best friend.”

“It’s _Uncle Dante_ , Madison,” Carl reminds her, re-emerging from the kitchen to pull the bags from her hands, and then the ones from his father’s. Madi tries another of those pouts, but Carl just stalks off with all the bags and yells for his brother to help him.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Dante tells Madi, pulling Lexa into a firm hug and then shaking Clarke’s hand, “I’m the girls’ uncle Dante.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Clarke smiles.

“Not just from Madi, I hope,” he grins, steadfastly ignoring Cage when he grumbles his way out the front door.

“I don’t know if any praise could be higher than ‘Uncle Grandpa’, but Lexa thinks highly of you,” Clarke assures him.

“The feeling is entirely mutual,” he says, eyes gleaming at his older niece, “How’s Anya doing these days? Last I checked, she was still in Greece.”

When his youngest son passes him in the doorway with his hands full, Dante stops him, pulls one bag of potato chips free, and hands it to Madi, who takes it as eagerly as she’d taken the broom from Diana, and walks off after her cousin when his dad lets him continue his path toward the kitchen, then looks right back to hear the rest of Lexa’s brief update on Anya’s life in Europe.

Dante _is_ very, very old, but he’s also still as kind and as patient as Lexa remembers. She has no clue how his children ended up being so, well, not like him, but she hopes Madi’s the one who absorbs all his goodness and then multiplies it.

They don’t have much time to catch up before Carl comes in, yammering about everyone getting back to work and proving to be an even bigger task master than his mother. No amount of puppy dog eyes, from Madi or from the adults around, can deter Carl from putting everyone to work.

They get everything dusted and swept. Dante even follows Madi from room to room, helping her get tiny piles of dust into the dustpan. The punch bowls are mixed and refrigerated. The coolers are filled with ice and bottled beverages. Fresh flowers are cut, distributed into vases, and then strategically placed on end tables. The dining room table is covered in an ornate table cloth and place settings, even though it likely won’t be used. Snack mixes and finger foods are arranged throughout the kitchen, sofas and armchairs set up for quiet conversation in the music room and library, folding chairs in rows filling two-thirds of the parlor with one-third left for the caskets to be rolled in.

When they can make it more than two minutes without Carl or Diana coming up with some other nitpicky task, Lexa hides out in the library with Clarke and Cage. Diana and Carl are probably perfectly busy driving themselves crazy with preparation in another room, and, last Lexa checked, Dante was smiling and nodding along obediently, Stockholm syndrome keeping him happy to do their bidding. Madi had gotten into one too many little accidents, been put on no less than three timeouts by Carl, and then was sentenced to an early nap time in the yellow room.

The only thing left to do is to wait, so Lexa relaxes into one of the armchairs Cage had dragged in from another room while Clarke peruses the wall of old, dustless books and Cage paces around rehashing his annoyance with his brother and mother. Lexa only has eyes for Clarke, though.

She turns in her chair, so that her legs hang over one arm and her back rests against the other. Her heels lay discarded on the floor, her spine curved, chin tucked into her chest as she watches the blonde survey rows and rows of perfect binding. The library, like most of the rooms in this house, has barely changed from what she remembers, even with all the rearranging they’ve done for the day, but she’s never liked any of it as much as she does right now, with her mental images being updated to accommodate a brilliant blonde in a navy dress meandering from shelf to shelf.

“I’m not surprised,” Cage goes on, unaware of or unbothered by the two women ignoring him, “I _shouldn’t_ be surprised. _Make yourself useful, Cage_. _Why aren’t you more like your brother, Cage_. Carl’s such a fucking—and mom has no room to—you know what? I don’t care. I’m not going to let them bug me. This is fine,” he says, yanking his tie loose and lying face-down on the dark rug in the center of the room.

“Don’t let your mother see you like that,” Lexa laughs, “or you’ll get hit with a _how old are you? Do I need to press your slacks for you, young man?_ ”

“Don’t remind me,” her cousin groans, “that woman is disturbed. Carl, too.”

“They’re a little intense,” Clarke says, not turning away from the row of books, “but I guess we’ll appreciate it when this all goes off without a hitch.”

“Don’t defend them,” Cage huffs, “they’re going easy on you since you’re new. Lexa, too, because of Uncle Titus. I’m the real victim here, and I could really use a massage. Especially if the masseuse is a leggy blonde.”

Lexa and Clarke both look in time to see Cage leering unapologetically at Clarke’s legs, so the brunette responds the only way she knows how.

A long, low moan of pain is Cage’s only response to Lexa’s heel landing squarely between his shoulder blades.

“Eyes to yourself, crybaby,” Lexa bites.

“Your luck still hasn’t changed,” Clarke reminds him, settling into the chair closest to Lexa’s, “Your dad has a better chance with me.”

“Ouch,” Lexa says, holding out a fist that Clarke begrudgingly bumps.

“I deserved that,” he concedes, “but, if I didn’t think my mother would nag me about it, you’d be in a headlock right now, Lexa. And you, Clarke, would bear witness to the full power of my animal magnetism.”

Lexa’s fake-gagging when they hear the front door open again.

“I’ll save it for another time, then,” Cage says, rolling onto his back and pushing up off the floor, “I guess we better get this over with.”

Lexa slips back into her shoes as Cage brushes himself off, and the three of them peek out into the hall, ready to go back into hiding at the first sign of an agitated Carl. Instead they find Diana and Dante hugging a strange man and woman at the door. Carl is on his way up the steps with one bag while Quint, the second of Dante and Diana’s three boys, lumbers behind him with a larger one.

Lexa didn’t forget about Quint exactly, she just didn’t think to ask about him. He’s always been the quiet one, getting lost in the loudness of Carl barking orders and Cage making snide comments and complaining. Now she realizes he must’ve been tasked with playing chauffeur to these two.

The man is young and tall, with long sandy hair swept back into a ponytail. Lexa guesses he’s around her age, maybe as old as Cage or Quint, but definitely not yet in his thirties, like Carl. He’s broad shouldered and scruffy, and stuffed into suit and tie that seem to constrict him, despite being well-tailored.

He has to stoop to accept Diana’s hug, and Cage snorts right into Lexa’s ear, and then she does the same into Clarke’s, when her aunt squeezes his bicep for what feels like an inappropriately long moment.

“That’s the wine kicking in,” Cage whispers, and Lexa jabs him in the ribs.

The woman is older, near Diana’s age, Lexa thinks, but frostily well-preserved. Her eyes are sharp and shifty, even with Dante’s gentle hand squeezing hers, and his kind, old-mannish smile pointed at her. Her hair is in a neat, dirty blonde bun, her makeup tastefully somber and highlighting cheekbones as severe as her eyes. She wears a form-fitting wraparound dress and heels that make her almost a head taller than Dante.

Where Diana can be unsettling, even after a lifetime of knowing her, this woman is almost frightening.

Lexa’s aunt’s style screams Stepford. Her clothes and hair and formulaically tasteful makeup give the impression that prolonged exposure to her might be a means of indoctrination into an inescapable cult. This woman’s look, her sharpness and her coldness, bypasses intimidating and borders on threatening.

“C’mon,” Cage rallies, slipping past them to stand beside his father. Lexa and Clarke follow his lead.

“Oh, good,” Diana says when they’re all lined up and ready to be introduced, “Cage, sweetheart, you remember Sienna’s mother, Nia? And her brother, Roan?”

“I do,” he says, offering a hand that each of them catch and release in what looks like a three-person game of hot potato.

“And you two remember our Cage, I’m sure,” Diana says, taking it upon herself to tighten Cage's tie back up to his throat.

“How could we forget,” Nia responds, and Lexa senses a hint of disdain that she assumes is justified, but irks her, nonetheless.

Diana slips between Lexa and Clarke, placing a hand high on Lexa’s back when she says, “This is Lexa, Titus’ daughter.”

Her aunt gives her the slightest push forward, as though Lexa isn’t perfectly aware of how to greet other human adults, and the brunette plasters on what she hopes is an appropriately neutral smile and extends her hand like Cage had.

“Pleasure to meet you,” she says, meeting Nia’s eyes even though the icy blue sends a chill down her spine. Roan has those same eyes, Lexa notices when she shakes his hand, the cheekbones, too, but they’re nowhere near as lethal as his mother’s. She thinks she should be used to faces like that, since Anya’s no slouch in the cheekbone department, but Nia is startling.

Lexa has no idea what to expect of Sienna, especially since these weaponized cheekbones are so unlike the soft chub of Madi’s face.

Diana introduces Clarke in the same way, nudging her into shaking their hands, and then leads everyone into the den for the sort of stilted small talk people make when they’re forced together, but pretending not to be.

The funeral directors arrive hot on the heels of Nia and Roan, and as uncomfortable as Lexa is stiffly explaining for the third time that she’s a financial analyst for a small company, not an accountant or a stockbroker or whatever other vaguely math-related career Carl can confuse for hers, she’s relieved not to be in the parlor with Diana, Dante, and Nia, overseeing the displaying of the bodies.

She almost rethinks that relief when Carl starts grilling Clarke over whether nursing is "just a stepping stone toward becoming a doctor", and then Cage asks whether she wears a candy striper uniform, but Quint has the good sense to lean from his chair to smack Cage upside the head, at least, and Roan surprises her by looking as unamused by her cousins as she feels. From the middle cushion of the couch he shares with the two of them, Roan side-eyes Carl to his left, then Cage to his right and cringes.

If there’s anything that Lexa worries might get a rise out of Clarke, it’s people making digs at the job she’s working so hard for, but the blonde brushes off both men and promises Cage that the only way he’s getting his hands on a candy striper outfit is if he wears one himself.

They’re put out of their misery when the adults, well, the _older adults_ come back to tell them the bodies are ready to be viewed before the rest of the guests start arriving. All three of them are frowning thoughtfully, all glassy-eyed and red-faced, and Diana delivers what seems to be a heavily practiced, but wine-tinged, spiel about preparing themselves mentally to see these people very differently than they might remember them.

“The morticians have done a wonderful job,” Diana near-slurs, as she dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief, “but Sienna and Titus _were_ in an accident, after all.” 

“What does that even mean,” Cage asks, “like, scale of normal to roadkill.”

“Not the time, Cage,” Dante says lowly, “and if you can’t handle this like a mature adult, you can go right to your room, like a child.”

It reminds Lexa that there’s an actual child upstairs, one who may or may not understand why her aunt’s house is about to be flooded with sad people.

“Should someone get Madi,” she asks no one in particular. Dante and Diana share a look, but defer to Nia, who looks genuinely bewildered.

“Why would we do that,” the woman asks.

Lexa looks at Clarke, sure that, if she’d made an outlandish suggestion, the blonde would be the first to call her out on it, but Clarke doesn’t try to stop her.

“Why wouldn’t we,” she asks.

“Lexa, sweetheart,” Diana starts with a sniffle, and Lexa bristles, because _Lexa, sweetheart_ almost always precedes condescension, “a pair of strangers just wheeled in your dead father’s body—and her dead mother’s—in expensive, mahogany boxes. They’re on display, right now, just waiting on a crowd of strange adults to cry all over them.”

“I know how wakes work, Diana,” Lexa spits, more than mildly offended that her aunt would think she needed this dumbed down, “This isn’t my first rodeo.”

“I know that. Of course, I know that,” Diana stresses, voice climbing in pitch even as her shoulders sag, “but, this is going to be a very sad affair, and she barely understands what’s happening as it is. Do you really think she needs to be present for that?”

It isn’t a question, not the way Diana says it.

“I don’t know,” Lexa says, “but don’t you think it’s worth considering?”

“She’s just a little girl, Lexa. She should be playing, not sitting through a wake,” Nia cuts in.

“So, what? She’s not going to the funeral, either?”

“No,” Nia scoffs, “she’s not.”

If Nia is intimidating when she doesn’t have reason to glare at Lexa, then she’s terrifying when she does.

Lexa’s doesn’t know many four-year-olds. In fact, she lives a life that doesn’t intersect much with children, at all. She doesn’t know how she’d feel if she knew Madi better, and, as a person who’s already seen one parent in one of those expensive boxes, she can agree it isn’t exactly pleasant. But, still…

“I went to my first wake, in _this_ house, and my first funeral when I wasn’t much older than she is now, and I was fine. We all were.”

“You cried for hours after seeing your grandpa’s body, Lexa,” Diana reminds her.

“I cried because Cage kept pulling my pigtails and Carl kept calling me a baby,” she remembers, crossing her arms. Carl shrugs from his spot on the couch while Cage mutters an _oh, yeah_ and laughs to himself.

“None of you should’ve been at the wake, or the funeral. They’re awful places for children, and I know that now,” Diana says, gesturing flippantly enough with her handkerchief that Nia flinches away from her. “Besides, this is completely different. They were in a car accident, Lexa. They won’t look like she remembers them. None of us want Madison to be exposed to all this sadness.”

On some level, Lexa knows this is a losing battle, and she isn’t even sure why she’s fighting it when neither woman seems like the type to back down, but she can’t imagine having missed her last chance to see her mother’s face, and she doesn’t think she wants Madi knowing the kind of regret that she’s lucky to have avoided.

“Madi’s parents are dead,” Lexa reminds everyone, “she’s already exposed, and she’s never going to have another chance to see them again.”

“Which is very sad, Lexa, but this is not a discussion,” Nia says, voice clipped with emotion.

“Why not?”

“Because, if this is the last she sees of them, it’s going to affect her for the rest of her life.”

“And if she never sees their faces again, it’s going to affect her for the rest of her life. I know you think you’re protecting her, or whatever, but keeping her away doesn’t save her from feeling the loss.” Lexa argues, straining herself not to raise her voice.

Clarke puts a gentle hand on her elbow and blows out a breath that Lexa can feel, but not hear. She knows it’s a signal for her to do the same, so she does.

“We’re not arguing about this, Lexa. Your aunt and I have discussed it, and, as Madison’s acting guardian, I have the final say,” Nia warns her, “Now if any of you would like to see them before the crowd arrives, this is your chance.”

She leaves the room then, not bothering to make sure the rest of them have taken her words to heart, disappearing into the long hall Lexa’s seen too much of today. Roan stands, smooths his hands over his pants, raises his chin, and follows her out the door, but, before he does all that, he shrugs at Lexa.

She doesn’t know what to make of it.

Dante and Diana wait for all of their sons to stand and file out before they step out behind them, Dante lingering just long enough to say _Take your time, kiddo_ , and smile softly at both women before leaving them alone again.

“I’m not going to ask if you’re okay,” Clarke says, her hand still curved around Lexa’s elbow.

“Am I being ridiculous? Is it silly to think a kid should get to say goodbye to her parents?”

Lexa feels like crying, and she supposes this is a fine place to do it, but she can’t. This isn’t the same balloon in the throat sadness she felt days ago, or the disembodied floatiness she felt a couple hours ago, or the crushing helplessness she felt years ago, when it was her mother she was mourning. This is different and distinct and frustrating.

Lexa’s picks at her cuticles because it’s all she can really do.

“It’s not silly,” Clarke says quietly.

“What if this messes her up? They can’t change their minds about this down the line, Clarke. If she misses her chance to say goodbye…”

“I know, Lex, but I don’t think we have a say in this.”

“ _That_ woman is Madi’s guardian,” Lexa frowns.

“She said that, yeah.”

“She seems awful.”

“She’s not the warmest person I’ve ever met,” Clarke says.

“What’s going to happen to Madi, being raised by someone like that?”

“I don’t know,” Clarke sighs, “but Roan isn’t that bad, right? And your aunt only ever talks about how much of a sweetheart Sienna was, so maybe she’s the anti-Dante. He’s a sweet old man who cranks out the Carls and Cages of the world, and she does the opposite.”

“Maybe.”

“I’m not going to bother telling you not to worry about this,” Clarke sighs, scooting close enough to brush their shoulders together, “but, at least, Madi has you worrying about her. That must be worth something in the growing up halfway decent department.”

“I don’t know how to do any of this, Clarke. I don’t know how I’m going to be in her life, or how to be a big sister, or how I’m going to deal with being tethered to someone like Nia for the rest of my life, or how I’m going to walk into the parlor and look at Titus’ dead body and feel anything other than pissed at him for spending my whole life lying to me and making things ten times harder for me than they needed to be.”

Clarke takes a deep breath beside her, laces her fingers into Lexa’s to stop her from picking at her cuticles any more than she already has.

“How am I supposed to do all of this,” she wonders.

“I don’t know,” Clarke admits, “but you know I’m with you, right? Every step of the way. If you want to get in the car and go straight home, then that’s what we’ll do. If you want to go into the parlor to see Titus, then I’m with you for that, too.”

Lexa takes a long look at Clarke, at this woman who she loves, at this woman who would absolutely run away from all this with her, at this woman who makes her feel too strong and too brave to do the running.

“Let’s start with the parlor,” she says, “but keep our escape options open.”

“We can do that,” Clarke says, squeezing her fingers for good measure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I've gotten some great comments (which I've read but not yet responded to because I'm both a procrastinator and a bum), but any feedback y'all have on what you think of the characters is always especially appreciated. Especially whether you think/feel they stand out from one another, because there are a lot of them introduced here and I'm not saying they'll be around forever, but this is one of those "if you hate something, speak now" kind of moments before they're cemented into place as people in my head.
> 
> Next chapter we'll for real get this wake business out of the way, and then we can suffer through a funeral together. It'll be an adventure.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It isn’t insufferable, and her tears are at bay, and, comparatively speaking, it’s only the second-worst parental wake she’s ever had to participate in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a huge bummer to write. My other projects are all meet-cutes and campy family fun and pretty lighthearted at the end of the day, but this one...it's a little angsty.
> 
> In good news, if you've been unlucky enough to follow either of my other WIPs, I got a beta. That means, thanks to pristinelyungifted, you're in for far better editing when I finally get my life together and write the things I need to write.
> 
> That said, she's on holiday at the moment, so any mistakes on this chapter are all me.

Lexa and Clarke are the last to see the bodies.

They weren’t in any rush to leave the relative quiet of the den, or the safety of a moment alone, temporarily free of Diana’s expectations and Carl’s demands and Nia’s, well, everything. The only thing that got Lexa moving out of her seat and into the hall was the fact that she believed every word she’d said to Nia about how it would feel to have one last chance to see a parent and to miss it.

Seconds passed them by, ticking into minutes, and Lexa’s courage swelled and deflated over and over, but, eventually, she knew she had to get up. It was too hard and too much and too soon for her to honestly decide what she felt about Titus after a lifetime of letdowns, but, she didn’t want to chance that regret.

Diana, Dante, and their boys were still outside the parlor waiting their turn when Lexa and Clarke made it out of the den. Time moved differently then, positively dragging, slowed by anticipation and dread, while nobody, not even Cage, could find words to offset or address the tension.

It could’ve been minutes, or hours, or lifetimes, but, eventually, Roan stalked out of the parlor, head held high and tears wetting his cheeks, shrugging off his mother’s hushed words and refusing to meet anyone’s eyes for more than a second before he disappeared through the front door. Everyone was paralyzed until Nia emerged after him, saying something about giving him space, and then heading up the staircase instead of following him out.

Diana and Dante showed the boys in next, and Lexa waited beside Clarke, her back leaning heavily against the wall in a way she thought her aunt would scold her for on any other day, wishing so hard it felt like prayer.

Wishing to feel nothing, so she could avoid the pain. Wishing to feel something, so, at least, she’d know she wasn’t damaged, that, after twenty-five years of trying or not trying hard enough, Titus hadn’t damaged her. Wishing to feel everything, enough for her own closure, and enough for the people she knows won’t get their own. For Anya, who, if only for a short while, counted Titus among her family; Anya, the sister who couldn’t be fooled as easily as Lexa, but never shattered any illusions of Titus she had, either. For her mother, who filled all the gaps Titus left in her without so much as pointing them out. For Madi, who probably got all the good Lexa used to think she missed out on, but nowhere near enough of it.

She’s never been big on wishes or hopes or prayers, but she tried. She had to try.

The family of five filtered out in what felt like barely enough time for Lexa to catch her breath. Carl had an arm around his mother, holding out tissues they hadn’t seen him carry in, his face dry and pale, but eyes tinged pink. Quint was at Diana’s other side, stoic as ever, his tears as stubborn as his older brother’s, but his skin gave him away; Quint never cried, but when he wanted to, his skin went red, screaming all the things Lexa didn’t think he ever would. Cage was practically tucked under Dante’s arm, shrinking into himself like he had when they were children, his lip curling and trembling, even as Dante whispered what Lexa could only imagine were all the right things.

The old man squeezed Lexa’s shoulder, just once, before they all dispersed in their own directions, and then she and Clarke were alone, again, and waiting for Lexa’s courage to swell once more.

Somehow, by chance or inner fortitude or, maybe, the feeling Lexa gets whenever Clarke wordlessly tangles their hands together, they made it over the threshold of the parlor, beyond the large flower arrangements on either side of the doorway, up the path separating two rows of folding chairs, until they were only feet away from two open caskets.

They’re the last to see the bodies, and Lexa’s grateful.

There’s nobody waiting their turn outside the door. Nobody who’ll have to strategically avoid her watery eyes. Nobody who’ll give her the same stupid half-smile she offered her cousins when they’d left this room, that meaningless conciliatory thing that adults do when they’re not sure how else to nonverbally emphasize that they’re aware of the shittiness of the current situation. Nobody optimistic enough to think she wanted them whispering all the right things into her ear.

They’re the last to see the bodies, and they’ve got a small pocket of time before strangers and distant relatives start trickling in from who-knows-where, and Lexa can’t decide if it’s too much time or not enough.

She goes to Titus first, uses their linked hands to nudge Clarke in his direction, to let her know it’s okay to get closer, and then lets go. Not okay, but necessary. Happening, whether she likes it or not.

This odd thing happens, when someone dies and their family decides to hold a wake. They die, and then someone, a professional, presumably, empties them out—drains them of all the things that used to fill them with life—and they fill up the empty space with embalming fluid and preservatives and whatever chemicals they need to stave off decomposition long enough for the dead person to be cleaned and dressed and polished and displayed for everyone who wants to see them once more. They die, they’re cleaned up, they’re presented; none of those steps are that strange to Lexa, though.

The odd part is that people who loved the now-dead person line up to stare down at them, and, without fail, half of them do exactly what Diana did: they say _he looks really good_ or _the funeral directors did a great job_ or _you can barely tell he died a grisly death_. Well, maybe not that last thing, not in as many words, but Lexa can fill in the spaces between what people say and what they’re afraid to say with what she thinks is staggering accuracy.

They’re the last to see the bodies, and, more than anything in the world, Lexa feels downright blessed to have a few minutes to look at Titus—to take in his sunken cheeks, and mottled eyelids—without anybody leaning in to lie to her about how he looks.

Titus looks dead. His skin is artificial-looking, pale and waxy, stretching and sinking into the grooves of his face, his neck, his hands. The foundation they chose is too dark, tinged with bronzer that concentrates in splotches on his forehead and jowls, at odds with the whiteness of his throat. The cover-up does nothing to hide the deep purpling under his left eye. His lips looked cracked, split and swollen-looking even under a muted, rosy tint.

She spends a few seconds looking at his nose, trying to place what’s wrongest about it, because something is surely wrong. It’s crooked, but it was always a little crooked. It’s swollen, and purpling like his eye, but she doesn’t think that’s it, either. The thing standing out most, the part of his nose that she has the hardest time unseeing is the thick, smooth, opaque line of orangey makeup that, she thinks, is supposed to hide the brokenness of it.

His chin is misshapen, off-balance somehow; one side is as strong and square as she remembers, but the other is dented, crumpled in a way that seems more fitting for plastic than bone. One cheekbone, too, Lexa realizes is a sunken version of itself.

In fact, his whole body seems lopsided. The right side is almost fine, as close to fine as he can look under a pound of off-color makeup; the left side is slack, barely claiming the amount of space his right side needs, deflating the arm and shoulder of his suit. His right hand is folded over his left, inches away from where the far-end of the coffin lid is closed on him, and morbid curiosity bubbles up in Lexa, so she leans in just close enough to note the bruising of that, too.

If Clarke thinks she’s being odd, she doesn’t tell her.

“He’s really dead,” Lexa says.

“Yeah,” Clarke breathes out, “He is.”

“I don’t know what I was expecting,” she admits, trying to take stock of what she’s seeing, the whole, dead man, instead of his battered, distracting parts. The man in the coffin is also the man smiling at her from a large, framed picture balanced on the lid of it, and he’s the man in her memories, too.

“Seven years,” Lexa says, “It’s been almost seven years.”

Clarke doesn’t say anything, she just turns her head to look at Lexa, just for a second, and then back at Titus.

“He looks smaller than I remember him being,” Lexa tells her, “Balder, too. Like, bald bald.”

The last time she’d seen him in person, he’d only just trimmed down the brown curls that had been receding for what felt like her whole life.

“Do you remember my mom’s wake?”

“You know I do,” Clarke says, “I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.”

“This doesn’t feel like that,” Lexa says, biting the inside of her cheeks.

“No?”

“No. It still sucks, though.”

For all the wishing Lexa did, to feel nothing or something or everything, to get closure for more than just herself, she doesn’t know how well it worked. This isn’t like seeing her mother, it isn’t near-crippling heartache or confusion or rage. It isn’t nothingness, either. It isn’t a void in her feelings assuming the shape of the void Titus left in her life for all those years. It isn’t prickling limbs or floaty disbelief.

Lexa is here, and this is real, and she feels _something_ , but she doesn’t quite know what, yet.

She knows that it sucks, though.

“Are you glad we came,” Clarke asks, furrowing her brow, “Even though it sucks?”

“Yeah,” Lexa says, without hesitation, because she’ll never have evidence otherwise, but will always believe she needed this moment. “He was an asshole, but, you know. Mine. Kind of.”

The picture they chose, the one that will rest on his coffin and smile at all the people who show up to pay their respects, can’t be very old. Titus is somewhere bright, with his eyes squinting to protect themselves from the natural light shining right into his face, and a hat covering what Lexa assumes is his bald head. There’s a guitar in his lap. He’s grinning, riddled with laugh lines and creases in his forehead and crow’s feet at his eyes, and he’s so much older than she’s ever seen him, but there’s a glimpse of the Titus she knew, too.

“Sometimes,” she starts, clearing her throat, but not looking away from Titus, “sometimes, I used to worry that I didn’t really remember him at all. I thought I did, you know. I thought I could picture sitting on his shoulders at the beach, or holding his hand in an airport, but I was never sure.”

Lexa chances a glance at Clarke, a foot away, too close or too far, she can’t decide.

“I hoped they were memories, but, for all I knew, they could be pictures I’d seen somewhere, or home movies I’d watched too many times. I couldn’t tell the difference. Still can’t, sometimes. I needed this, I think. I needed a memory I couldn’t doubt.”

The blonde traps her bottom lip in her teeth and looks at Lexa with this face that, from anybody else, might read like pity. From Clarke, though, Lexa knows it’s hurt. It’s Clarke, hurting on Lexa’s behalf, feeling the pain that Lexa hasn’t avoided, exactly, but hasn’t quite allowed herself to feel, either.

“Summer of ’99,” Clarke says softly, “Remember that?”

Lexa nods, biting her cheeks a little harder. She couldn’t forget it if she tried.

“We were inseparable, that summer, you and me,” the blonde smirks, and they were inseparable the summer before, and every summer after, too, but that summer was special, because, “Titus surprised you guys, came out of nowhere to spend a couple days with you. I’d never seen you so excited, not without trying to play it off.

“You were thrilled to see him, and still, somehow, refused to spend the first day with him unless I got to come, too,” Clarke reminds her.

“We had plans,” Lexa shrugs, because they always had plans, and she never wanted to cancel her plans with Clarke, even when she was too little to actually be in charge of them.

“Yeah,” Clarke grins, “We did. And Titus let me cram in the backseat of his rental car with you and Anya, and took us to Topper Popper—”

“Anya was _so_ sick of Topper Popper—”

“We loved it, though. And he bought us the biggest bag caramel corn in the place—”

“Our parents were so mad,” Lexa laughs.

“Because it was almost as big as we were, and we’d eaten the whole thing by the time we made it home.”

Lexa’s still laughing when she reminds Clarke that, “We both threw up that night.”

“But it was still the best day of that whole summer, Lex. Even Anya had fun, and that was when she thought she was too cool to hang out with us babies.”

“That’s because he let her drive the car around the parking lot, while we ate our weight in popcorn,” Lexa rolls her eyes and looks down through blurring eyes at Titus, fighting off a smile when she adds, “She was, what, barely twelve? He was such an idiot.”

“He was,” Clarke agrees, “An asshole, too. But, for as disappointing as he turned out to be, he made that day special. I hope you don’t have to doubt that one.”

“I might need you to remind me, from time to time,” Lexa says, swallowing thickly, and she can think of worse places to cry, but the tears won’t seem to come.

“I think I can handle that,” the blonde promises, blue eyes glassy.

This trip, this day, this moment, it’s not enough time for Lexa to make sense of what she feels about Titus, but she’s glad she’s here, even more with Clarke by her side. Clarke, who wasn’t around Titus enough to get to know him over the years, but will always know better than most the way he made Lexa feel.

There’s a gentle knock at the door, Dante leaning in to let them know that people will be showing up soon. Not rushing them, but warning them.

Lexa almost autopilots out of the room at his words. It’s not a reflex as much as an oversight. She knows she’ll see more of Titus, in this very room, with people she barely knows gawking at him for the next few hours, and she knows she’ll see him tomorrow, at the funeral, too.

She’s turned in place, by the time Dante ducks out, but she only makes it a couple steps before Clarke is lightly grasping her wrist, and fixing her with a genuinely confused face and darting her eyes to the other side of the room, where another open casket waits, open and overlooked.

Sienna is an afterthought.

The brunette doesn’t have to steel herself mentally or emotionally like she did before seeing Titus. She walks right over, using Clarke’s hold on her to pull her along, and looks down into the open lid.

The woman resting to the right of Titus is younger than Lexa expects, although, with Madi in the mix, Lexa can admit that she hasn’t known what to expect in days. The woman is in her thirties, _early-thirties_ , maybe. It’s easier to overlook her broken parts than it was with Titus.

Her cheekbones are every bit as sharp as Nia’s, hair as sandy as Roan’s, but longer and wavier. And her nose, unlike Titus’ is unbroken and unmarred by off-color makeup.

It’s hard to reconcile what Lexa knows of Madi with what she sees in Sienna, but, if Lexa has to decide, she thinks Sienna’s nose might be the one thing she definitely got from her mother.

“He really robbed the cradle with this one,” Lexa says, not that she knows of any of his other conquests along the years. Maybe he was always _that_ guy after his marriage ended, dating women twenty years younger than he was. “She’s not much older than us.”

“She was probably around our age when she had Madi,” Clarke muses.

“Can you even imagine that,” Lexa asks, catching the blonde’s eye, “I mean, we used to think it’d be so easy to be young and accomplish all our dreams, while also getting married and having a million kids at, like, twenty-two.”

“Now, it feels like we have our whole lives still ahead of us, but she was raising a whole human.”

“Exactly,” Lexa says, and all of a sudden, she’s struck by gratitude. Lexa’s grateful that Nia’s here, ice queen or no, ready to take care of Madi, because Lexa honestly can’t imagine a world in which she’s old enough or mature enough or settled enough to make the choice Sienna made.

There’s not enough time in the world for Lexa to contemplate a choice like that, and, when the doorbell sounds again and Diana comes in with Dante and Nia, apologetic but authoritative, giving Lexa a quick hug without so much as pausing her fiftieth reiteration of what she expects from everyone, Lexa resolves herself to forget about it altogether.

Before she knows it, one doorbell ring turns into five, then ten, then Cage handwriting a sign and taping it to the door when he gets tired of having to answer it.

Lexa’s only real job is to stand, feet away from Titus, accepting the clammy handshakes and perfumed hugs of people who assure her that Titus was a real stand-up guy. Diana and Dante are beside her, while Nia and Roan, who only came back after the first few visitors arrived, stand on Sienna’s side of the aisle. Cage and his brothers split time between greeting the relatives Lexa pretends to recognize and playing Tetris trying to fit the casserole dishes people bring into the half-full fridge.

Clarke helps where she can. She offers coasters and picks up the canes that fall over when two old ladies sit in folding chairs and finds tissues at the first inkling of tears. Mostly, though, she sits. She chooses a chair halfway back, next to the aisle, right in Lexa’s line of sight, and she keeps Lexa from going insane over all the _he looks so good_ s and _you must’ve been very proud_ s and the one _he was such a good dad_ that she almost forcefully disagrees with.

Clarke sits, and she watches, and she arches her eyebrow and flares her eyes and glares at all the right moments, so Lexa knows she isn’t alone, and, if anyone here is delusional, it certainly isn’t Lexa.

It’s bland and uncomfortable, but it isn’t as awful as Lexa expects. If anything, she just feels out of place, like she’s trespassing on an event she shouldn’t be at. The time doesn’t slow or drag, like she’s afraid it might. It doesn’t speed up, either. It just passes, allowing faces to blur, people to come and go, half-interesting stories to be shared and forgotten, the sun to shine on an entirely different part of the slightly too stuffy room.

It isn’t insufferable, and her tears are at bay, and, comparatively speaking, it’s only the second-worst parental wake she’s ever had to participate in.

She thinks it could be worse.

She’s not wrong.

A tall man with a beard is telling her about the garage band he and Titus were in, before she was ever born, when Lexa realizes how right she is. All her relatives are tangled up in anecdotes of their own. Even Clarke is chatting with Titus’ painfully old great-aunt about something. They’re all distracted, guards lowered, and none of them notice, at first, when a wild haired little girl manages to slip down the stairs, wind through groups of preoccupied adults, and into the doorway of the parlor.

“Oh, shit,” is the warning Lexa gets from Cage, who’s the first to spot Madi over the heads of the people sitting and chatting, but there are bodies and distance separating him from her.

Lexa barely has time to roll her eyes at him, then register the genuinely concerned look on his face, and follow his line of sight before the kid is running up the aisle.

She’s smiling.

“Uncle Roan,” she practically shouts, pulling every eye in the room to her, “what’re you—”

Roan has the quickest reflexes of all, cutting away from the old man he’s been talking to, weaving through visitors to scoop Madi into his arms before she can even finish her question. Lexa can see the girl’s arms tighten around his neck, her face lit up in glee, as he tries to discreetly pull her away, but he’s too slow. Madi’s eyes are wide open, and, through the throng of people frozen in silence, she sees Sienna’s picture.

She struggles in Roan’s arms, squirming and twisting until she can see, until her face falls.

“Hey, that’s my mommy,” she announces, “put me down, Uncle Roan. Put me down.”

Quint steps in behind them, trying to limit what Madi can see, but it’s too late.

“That’s my daddy,” Madi informs them after sweeping her eyes to the other side of the room, kicking her feet and pushing both arms against Roan’s chest to try to pry herself out of her uncle’s hold. “Why are they like that? Let me go.”

“Madi, sweetheart, I need you to settle down,” Diana starts, as Quint catches little fists before they can land against Roan’s face.

“No,” Madi yells, her face violently red, “You said they went with the angels. Why are they here? Did you lie?”

It takes Roan carrying Madi, Quint holding her fists, and Cage pinning her feet closer to her uncle for them to get her out of the room. Diana follows, and all Lexa can hear is a shrill voice screaming, “You lied,” over and over, until, finally, she can’t hear anything at all.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tensions run high, and Lexa jumps at a chance to get away from it all. Somehow, she ends up closer than she started.

The silence that sweeps through the parlor after Madi is carried away is as pronounced as her cries. It’s thick and awkward, an uninvited presence announcing itself even when everyone would rather it be ignored.

The tall man with the beard doesn’t finish his story. He doesn’t pick up where he left off, explaining how he tried to give Titus banjo lessons when they were still young men. He, and almost everyone around him, goes quiet and stiff, afraid to make prolonged eye contact, afraid to break the silence, afraid to shatter this unwelcome thing. The silence is awful, but nobody seems brave or eager enough to push past it, to find out what comes next.

A room full of adults, and not one of them, not even Carl or Dante or Nia, seems capable of finding the words to follow what they all just saw, what they all heard.

There’s no handbook for grief. Actually, Lexa thinks, there’s almost definitely a handbook for grief, several, even, but she didn’t have the foresight to skim one in preparation for this trip, or this moment, and, now, she doesn’t know how to react to the people around her. Not the tall man whose story was cut off. Not any of the strangers, especially the distant relatives who claim to recognize Lexa and seem to expect recognition in kind, if only they press hard enough. Not Nia, whose guilt seems to overpower her usual iciness, at least long enough for her eyes to skate regretfully toward Lexa, just for a second, before she quietly excuses herself to check on Madi and the others. Not her uncle, whose sadness seems to add years to his already wizened face. Not even Clarke, who’s the only person in the room bold enough to keep her eyes focused on a single person, on Lexa, instead of letting them ping around from stranger to stranger.

Lexa is at a loss, and not just for words. As gut-wrenching as it was to witness what she’s sure is going to be one of the worst moments of Madi’s life, Lexa’s still trapped in the same emotional limbo she’s been suspended in for days.

Her tears are still trapped firmly in their ducts. Her sadness still slumbers, heavy and insistent underneath her ribs. It still tangles with her anger, with her confusion, with all the other feelings she can’t quite name.

There’s no comfort she can offer, no bright side to be found and shared with these people who clearly need _something_.

It’s Carl who ends up breaking the long stretch of silence. From his corner of the parlor, opposite Lexa, he clears his throat, loudly, and apologizes to everyone in the room for Madi’s _outburst_. He’s as brusque as ever, even when he tries to make some Cage-worthy joke about getting the drama out of the way early. It makes most of the people in the room laugh uneasily, like pretending that Carl has a sense of humor is easier than admitting that he doesn’t.

It just pisses Lexa off.

She isn’t even sure why, if it’s her cousin’s delivery or that he’s making a joke out of a freshly orphaned little girl’s pain or just one of those rogue-ish feelings defying gravity inside her body, rising up, up, up.

She doesn’t bother trying to name it. She just walks right back down the center aisle, leaving the tall man behind, past the old ladies and their canes, past the distant cousin with the elaborate story about the mess Lexa made when she kept her for an afternoon twenty-four years ago, past Carl with his stiff, phony smile. She autopilots right out of the parlor, then the long hallway, then the house. It isn’t until she’s pulling on the door handle to the Griffin’s locked SUV that she snaps out of it and hears Clarke calling her name

Clarke, whose hand is hot on Lexa’s forearm. Clarke, who’s so close that Lexa can barely register anything else, aside from the metal handle her own fingers are wrapped around. Clarke, whose blue eyes are wide with alarm.

“Lexa,” the blonde says, her voice softer than Lexa expects based on the look on her face, “Lex, talk to me.”

The hand on her forearm moves up, along with its twin, until Lexa can feel Clarke’s thumbs brushing against her cheeks, her index fingers along her jaw.

“I’m fine,” Lexa says, when her brain and her eyes and mouth have all recalibrated to the same pace, the same basic level of functionality. She releases the handle, steps back, out of Clarke’s hands. “I’m okay.”

“That look, that dazed, deer-in-headlights thing, that doesn’t look okay,” Clarke says, brows pulled tight, “Maybe we should get you some water.”

Heat prickles under the collar of Lexa’s dress, and she remembers that it’s still hot outside. It’s still summer, bright and humid, even though the grossly overworked air conditioner in the house has added to the chills down her spine and dried out her skin for the last few hours.

She tries to decide whether she prefers the sticky heat of the outside world over the oppressive cold of the house.

“Can we just,” she starts, pausing to bite the inside of her cheek, “not go back inside? Not yet, at least. I think I need a break.”

“Okay,” Clarke says slowly, alarm giving way to confusion. “Do you want to talk—”

“We’ve got the whole drive home, remember,” Lexa reminds the blonde, who sighs and nods even when Lexa knows she doesn’t think that journey can come quickly enough.

Thinking out loud is Clarke’s thing, not Lexa’s. If Clarke has a problem, she gives Lexa a near-instant play-by-play. She airs her grievances as they come, out-loud, sometimes in a huff of rhetorical questions, usually while pacing, her volume increasing and decreasing depending on which part of the carpet she’s wearing a hole in while she works things out. All the while, the brunette’s only real job is to let her, and, sometimes, to move a chair a few inches back to give her more room. Lexa knows, after two decades of learning, that it’s just how the blonde is; she can’t make sense of something, and can’t shift her focus anywhere else, until she lays it all out there.

Lexa can barely put anything out into the world until she’s thoroughly dissected it in her own head.

She doesn’t explain it to Clarke because, after twenty years of learning, Clarke already knows.

“Looks like escaping is off the table for now,” Clarke notes, looking at how tightly packed the SUV is between two cars. “Unless you want to make a break for it on foot.”

There’s a hint of a smile on the blonde’s face, and Lexa appreciates it because she recognizes it for what it is, an easy out. If they stay here in silence, if they keep dancing around Lexa’s feelings, skirting past the elephant that seems to take up space in every room they visit, without so much as trying to distract themselves, they’re both going to regret it. They’ve spent years learning to negotiate when to push and when to pivot, when to give each other space, if only emotionally, and when to cling that little bit tighter.

Now’s the time to pivot away, because, otherwise, Clarke’s going to be more and more tempted to pry, and Lexa’s going to shrivel up inside herself, and it’ll drive them both nuts for the next thirty-six hours.

“It’s a million degrees,” Lexa reminds her, already feeling sweat collecting under her makeup, “We’re not walking. If anything, we have to steal a car.”

“Knew I should’ve ordered that lock-picking kit from that informercial in the nineties,” she smirks.

“C’mon, Griffin, you brought your ukulele, but not any high-tech car-stealing equipment. I don’t even know you right now,” Lexa plays along.

“You got me that ukulele,” Clarke reminds her, poking a hot hand accusingly against Lexa’s sternum and grinning when she adds, “So, clearly, my priorities are not the only ones out of whack.”

“Clearly,” Lexa concedes, smiling right back.

She doesn’t know what her life would be like without this, without Clarke doing some sort of intangible magic, figuring out how to make her feel loads lighter, if only for a few stolen moments in the middle of a grand disaster.

“You two up for a field trip?”

Where Clarke’s gifts have always extended to improving small moments, Cage has always had a knack for interrupting them.

Lexa and Clarke look up the driveway to see Lexa’s cousin walking toward them, a set of keys dangling from one hand. His tie hangs loose around his neck again, barely staying in the simple knot. The sleeves of his button-down shirt are already bunched up to his elbows, and, even from afar, Lexa can tell he’s upset. Upset and pretending not to be.

By the time he reaches them, Quint has slipped past the front door, too. He’s more put together than his little brother, but he’s still almost as red as he had been coming out of the parlor after seeing the bodies for the first time. They’re both the picture of sadness, Cage with his wild-eyed restlessness and Quint with his deep, wavering frown. Lexa tries not to think about how much worse off Madi probably is, still stuck inside that house.

Clarke defers to Lexa when the men are side-by-side, standing before them expectantly.

“Where are we going,” Lexa asks, because, when option A is a house of compounded misery and option B is sweating through semi-formal wear on a sidewalk, you choose option C.

 

The bar they end up at is twenty minutes away and barely above a hovel. Lexa almost can’t believe that Cage picked it out. Quint, maybe, since he’s always been something of a loner, quiet and gruff and unassuming. Something about Quint just screams dive bar. But Cage? He’s too much of a peacock to fit in here, Lexa thinks. She can see him in some chrome-covered, cosmopolitan bar, sipping overpriced martinis and initiating conversations that would earn him a fat lip in a place like this.

But, for some reason, this is the place he and his brother argued over from the front seat while Clarke and Lexa looked on. This is what they settled on, after three rounds of rock, paper, scissors, and plenty of grumbling from Quint. Lexa hasn’t been in town since before she could buy herself a drink, and, since she and Clarke were just along for the ride, there was no point in weighing in on either side, even if her instinct would’ve been to shut down Cage, just for the hell of it.

It’s dim and cool, an oasis on a hot, miserable afternoon, and unsurprisingly quiet for weekday, so Lexa can’t really find it in herself to complain.

“Four shots,” Cage orders, leading the group to the bar, hopping onto a stool, and sliding a chrome-colored card across the bar before the others have even settled in beside him, “Wild Turkey.”

The bartender looks up, nods, doesn’t smile. Lexa wonders if he knows her cousin, or if he’s just a really good judge of character.

“Three,” Quint corrects, jerking a thumb at the others from his spot on Cage’s right. He points to himself and says, “Budweiser.”

“ _Four_ and a Budweiser, thanks,” Cage presses, flashing his smarmiest smile.

“I’m not doing one,” Clarke informs him, leaning forward to look past Lexa at her cousin, “I can drive us back.”

“Ever heard of Uber,” he says, looking past Lexa in the same way.

“And what? Just leave your car here,” Clarke asks incredulously.

“That’s Carl’s car,” he scoffs, “I’m more of a leather seat guy.”

“Great,” Lexa groans, “Now we’re all getting lectured twice as hard when we get back.”

“And,” Clarke adds, “we should probably get your brother’s car back before he freaks out. He seems like the type to report it stolen.”

“My brother’s a dick,” Cage shrugs.

“You’re a dick,” Quint chimes in, thanking the bartender for the frosty cold bottle he cracks open for him.

“Two things can be true at once,” Cage tells him, divvying out the shots the bartender slides across the bar top.

Quint takes a long sip of his beer while Cage passes two shots in Lexa’s direction.

“I’m serious,” Clarke says to Cage, and then to the bartender, “Can I have a water, please.”

“Do the math,” he says snidely as the bartender turns his back, “two for Lexa plus two for me equals none leftover for Prudie McPrude.”

“Getting day-drunk and name-calling? Super mature for a thirty-year-old,” Clarke huffs, folding her arms on the bar.

“I am twenty-seven,” he hisses, scowling through Lexa, “And I’m sorry, did I ask for the opinion of the mom friend?”

“First, I don’t need permission to speak, especially not from somebody called ‘Cage’,” Clarke bites, “and, second, I’m not your friend. And, since I haven’t tried to spit-shine you, I’m damn sure not your mother, either.”

Lexa swears she can hear the bartender almost choke on his laughter as he slides Clarke her water.

“Cute,” Cage spits.

She could jump in. Could make some big show of defending Clarke against her mouthy older cousin, but watching the blonde verbally destroy him is twice as satisfying.

“Your special friend’s a real ball buster, Lexa. I have mixed feelings,” Cage tells her.

He lifts his first shot toward Lexa, waiting until she clinks her glass against his. They knock them back at the same time, Cage slamming his glass on the bar when he’s finished.

It burns the whole way down.

“Why,” Lexa chokes out, refusing to give her cousin the satisfaction of seeing her grimace or hearing her cough, especially when he’s smirking at her and patting her roughly on the back like she’s never had a drink before, “Because she burned you worse than the bourbon?”

She gets one last pat from Cage, a little harder than the rest, as his toothy smile slips into a snarl.

“A match forged in the depths of hell, you two,” he grumbles under his breath.

When Lexa steals a glance at Clarke from the corner of her eye, the blonde is doing the same, her smirk twitching. Lexa rolls her eyes dramatically, just for Clarke.

“A couple drinks,” Quint warns his brother when he sees him pushing forward his empty shot, maybe warns Lexa, too, “then we’ll go back.”

“Shots don’t count, though,” Cage stage-whispers to Lexa.

“I’m not sure that’s how it works,” she argues, but clinks their second shots together just as well.

“I’ve been told I’m even better looking after a shot,” Cage says, leaning behind Lexa this time to waggle his eyebrows at Clarke, then signaling for more. “Care to see if it’s true?”

“I thought you had mixed feelings,” Lexa says, this time rolling her eyes directly at her cousin.

“Very. Might even say there’s a _hung_ ,” he pauses, to really stress the word, “jury in my head.”

Quint groans, loudly, like he’s in physical pain just hearing his brother speak.

This, the innuendo and pigheadedness is exactly the type of thing that Lexa thought would’ve gotten Cage clobbered by now.

“That’s apparently not the only thing in your giant head,” Clarke says.

While she’s sure the blonde can hold her own against anyone, especially a secretly spineless, twenty-seven-year-old leach like Cage, Lexa figures this is a good time to step in, lest she find herself pulling Clarke out of a bar room brawl.

Lexa leans back to disrupt Cage’s line of sight with a forced smile, and tells him, “I’m two shots in, and you’re still fugly.”

Clarke laughs and adds, in her most sickeningly sweet voice, “Looks like that myth has already been busted.”

“Interesting,” Cage says, looking down at the four new drinks in front of him, “four perfectly good shots and nobody with good enough manners to share them with.”

Lexa rolls her eyes and wraps her hand around one of them before informing her cousin that, “Lying is impolite,” in her haughtiest voice, channeling her aunt as she says it.

Quint’s laugh is a deep bark beside Cage, a sound Lexa doesn’t hear often.

She doesn’t wait for Cage to catch up as she downs the third, but offers a, “Thanks for the shots, Buttface,” and laughs out loud when Quint reaches across his brother to smack down the middle finger that barely makes it above the bar in response.

“I hate you all,” Cage mutters, small and petulant as he takes his shot.

Clarke orders two more waters, for Lexa and Cage, even as she laughs at Lexa’s cousin. She calls him a big baby, and Lexa’s in total agreement, until the blonde tries to casually remind them they don’t have all day to get drunk and be petty toward each other. Lexa wouldn’t mind staying right here, hearing the many ways Cage can be embarrassed in public, if it would keep her from having to go back to the house.

The boys aren’t in any hurry, and neither is Lexa, even if they should be, so it’s also Clarke who corrals Lexa and Cage into slowing down after their third shot. She sweet talks Lexa, reminds her that she’s a lightweight, that she’s got a day and a half left in this place, that it’ll suck marginally less if she makes it through without any dizziness or a hangover, that slowing down is the choice she’d make if she weren’t listening to Cage, of all people. She’s nowhere near as gentle with Cage. She basically threatens to leave him behind, and then to rat him out to Carl, and his mommy, if he doesn’t behave.

Their fourth shots sit side-by-side on the bar top, lukewarm and wanted and off-limits until they’ve finished their waters and Clarke has given them the go ahead.

“Not to be an asshole—” Lexa starts, before Cage can predictably tell her it’s too late and she has to punch him in the arm, “but,” she presses on while he rubs at his bicep, “isn’t alcoholism, you know, hereditary? Should we be here drinking to avoid our problems?”

“It’s only alcoholism if you’re drinking alone,” Cage reasons, and Quint sort of hums beside him. Lexa doesn’t know if it’s in agreement or disbelief, but she doesn’t care to ask.

 

 

Two hours and two shots later, Lexa’s feelings have leveled. She hasn’t found a way to chase them off completely, but nothing in her body or her mind feels like it’s rising against her will. Her hurt and her dread and her anger and her fear, they all seem to rest at an easy simmer, where hours ago they threatened to boil over.

Clarke is speaking her mind, even joking around, in earnest. That half-hearted self-conscious tinge that colors things she says when she’s too preoccupied with worry to relax into herself ebbs away. One of her feet rests on the bottom rung of Lexa’s stool, but it doesn’t feel out of the ordinary. It isn’t concern or hovering, it’s just Clarke, sipping her drink and bobbing her head to outdated rock music and mercilessly tearing into Cage if he so much as says her name, all while her shoe rests an inch from Lexa’s.

Quint cements himself as the best of his brothers when, a couple beers in and finally back to his natural coloring, he swaps his stool beside Cage for the one next to Clarke. The bar is low, but Quint clears it. He’s slightly more talkative than Lexa’s come to expect since they were kids, and asks Clarke simple questions about her work, about the few classes that stand between her and a degree in nursing, and, unlike his brothers, he listens to her answers without demeaning or objectifying her.

It’s strange and disarming, but kind of nice, too.

Cage is as crass as ever. He still finds a way to make a joke out of almost everything, and, while he’s still a certifiable mess by Diana’s standards, with his shirt wrinkling a bit more to accommodate his slouching and his tie in a heap of solid fabric on the bar, that wild-eyed restlessness disappears. Lexa expects he’ll be the worst version of himself with a few more drinks in him, but he’s actually not so bad.

It helps that, when the bourbon sets in, Cage tires of his unsuccessful attempts to get Clarke to indulge in anything strong than a Shirley Temple, _not because I’m hitting on you, but because you’re boring the shit out of me_ , and finally leaves her alone.

His jokes are exactly as shitty as Lexa expects, but Carl’s the butt of at least seventy percent of them, and it’s easier than Lexa anticipates to laugh along.  
They get on surprisingly well with a few drinks in their system, Lexa and Cage, looming threat of heredity be damned. Well enough that Clarke and Quint get creeped out and cut them off before Lexa can get her cousin to pass the forty-dollar mark on his tab.

They share the backseat on the way back, undeniably tipsy, but not drunk, and Lexa can’t tell whether Clarke’s glances in the rear-view mirror keep happening because she’s relieved to see her smiling or terrified that she’s smiling with Cage.

 

 

The lecture Carl gives them when they make it to the house is swift and severe, delivered mostly in a hushed whisper because there are still people filtering in and out of the parlor, the kitchen, the hall, virtually everywhere but the too-hot sunroom where he directs them to. It’s punctuated by a bathroom break for Cage, first, then one for Lexa, which he doesn’t seem to appreciate.

He’s every bit Diana’s son when he scolds them while adjusting Cage’s tie, looping it around his brother’s throat and tightening it until he slaps his hand away. Even more so when he busies himself fussing over the small stain from the few drops of Wild Turkey that dribbled down Cage’s chin and seeped into his collar instead of his mouth.

He tears into Quint for dropping the ball on supervising Cage. He shreds them both for stealing his keys without asking. He calls them out for leaving him with the lion’s share of the work, but, when he tries to start in on Lexa, Clarke crosses her arms and stops him with a look to rival one of Nia’s, and he loses his nerve.

He seems like he’s running out of steam when Cage produces the card he’d paid the bartender with a smirk. Lexa’s almost sure she actually sees the moment when his blood pressure spikes. His jaw grinds so hard that she hears it feet away.

She’s half-expecting one of the younger two to end up in a headlock.

She considers Cage lucky when Carl snatches the card from between his fingers and smacks him upside the head.

“You’re a fucking child,” Carl spits at Cage face red enough to rival Quint’s, “and I’m telling Mom and Dad as soon as this is all over.”

He shoulders past Cage as he leaves the four of them in the sunroom. By the time he’s disappeared through the doorway, Lexa and Cage are laughing again.

“Okay,” Quint concedes, “he’s a dick.”

There’s a strange lightness that all four of them share, laughing at Carl’s haughtiness and Quint’s candidness. It only lasts long enough for Clarke and Quint to come to their senses and admit that the four of them should be helping, instead of trying to stretch two hours of escape into three.

There’s still plenty to do, even more strangers and casserole dishes to worry about.

When Lexa agrees with Cage’s _Carl already has at least a hundred plans. Trying to help might just fuck them all up_ , and tries to collapse onto one of the white wicker chairs, Clarke and Quint trade a look that Lexa can’t decipher, and then come to some kind of understanding.

“We’re separating you two,” Quint informs them, wrapping one strong arm under Cage’s and yanking him to his feet, then turning to Clarke and saying, “I’ll take this idiot.”

“Hey,” Cage pouts, pulling out of his brother’s hold, “so much for being the least dickish among us.”

“And I’ll take this one,” Clarke says, ignoring Cage just as resolutely as Quint does. She holds out a much gentler hand and waits for Lexa to accept it before she pulls her to her feet.

“Rude,” Lexa accuses, poking one hand into Clarke’s side until she squirms and giggles, even as she loops her other arm around the blonde’s shoulders.

“ _Brilliant_ idiot,” Clarke amends, peeling Lexa’s hand from her side and not letting it go.

“That’s better,” Lexa smiles, warm and fuzzy from either the bourbon or the way Clarke looks up at her.

“You sure you aren’t _special_ friends,” Cage wonders aloud, narrowing his eyes between the two women, “because my cousin _might_ actually have more game than I thought.”

They disentangle themselves, and Clarke rolls her eyes.

“Is that a compliment,” Lexa asks, glossing over his insinuations and reaching out to uncrumple one of his sleeves, just as Clarke advises him to, “Stop underestimating your cousin.”

“I like it better when you hate each other,” Quint interjects, cringing when Cage doesn’t pull away from Lexa’s methodical folding.

“Me too,” Clarke admits.

“We don’t hate each other,” Cage scoffs, “We’re just too similar.”

Lexa’s laugh is guttural, sputtering in her cousin’s face as Clarke emphatically disagrees.

“Name one way you’re alike,” Clarke challenges him, while Lexa starts in on Cage’s second sleeve.

“We both like bourbon,” he offers, “and the ladies,” he adds, and then, when nobody seems impressed, “Might even say we have similar taste in women.” 

He waggles his eyebrows again and bursts out laughing when Lexa’s hands still and her cheeks flame.

 

 

Clarke and Quint are serious about splitting up Lexa and Cage. The two of them decide amongst themselves, not leaving room for any dissent, even though Lexa and Cage still mostly have their wits about them. Quint leads his brother away to the front door, watching him like a hawk while they thank people for coming and walk bereaved guests out to their cars. Clarke takes Lexa on a path with more stops, first to the bathroom, because she can spot a pee-dance from a mile away, then to the kitchen to down a glass of water and set out a few more finger foods, and, finally, they drift in and out of open rooms together, mingling with the people who are, apparently, here to mingle.

Lexa entertains a few more stories about Titus, but Clarke doesn’t ask her to go back into the parlor.

It’s embarrassingly easy not to think of Madi. She’s just a little girl, after all. A little girl Lexa’s known for less than a day, one she didn’t even know existed until the one person connecting them died.

She didn’t forget, not exactly. Not in the driveway, not in Carl’s car, not at the bar. She just allowed herself to put it all away. Her confusion and her concern and the sadness that doesn’t quite feel like it belongs entirely to her. It all leveled off with the Wild Turkey, and Lexa was so relieved for one stretch of sanity, one stretch of freedom from herself and from all this bullshit she never asked for or wanted, that she let it.

Lexa already has one sister to worry about, and it isn’t fair that she’s been saddled with another. Not on one of the worst days of the girl’s life.

She knows it’s childish and selfish and, maybe, cowardly. She knows that, if Anya were here, she wouldn’t shy away. She would dive right in, head first with something to say or do to make this day more bearable for Madi even if it would almost definitely earn her a dirty look from Nia and huff from Diana. She wouldn’t have left this house, no matter how much she hates it, without making sure the kid was okay.

Lexa already has one sister, and, since the moment she watched Madi’s world fall apart, it’s been easier to run and to hide and to drink, than to do what she knows Anya would do.

It’s easy not to think of Madi, at least until everyone else has come and gone.

After the last of the guests, another of Lexa’s distant relatives, lets her out of a vice-grip of a hug and waves his goodbyes, she and Clarke join the shuffle of the boys, flitting from room to room to make sure the place is empty, save for immediate family. When they’re sure there aren’t any stowaways, the girls find themselves at the dining room table with Dante, Roan, Quint, Cage, and Carl.

It’s awkward and none of them do much talking because it all leads to cross-table glaring, but there are three casserole dishes, two pies, a fruit salad, and a platter of meatballs that wouldn’t fit in the fridge laid out between them, so they all sit in their chairs and pick at what they want. 

When Diana comes downstairs to join them and sinks heavily into the open seat beside Dante without a word, Lexa and her cousins trade glances across the table. She was in and out, here and there, popping around the house to see that things were going smoothly, consoling and being consoled by visitors, same as Nia and Dante, but both women had gone upstairs to bring Madi down for dinner.

And now, Diana is here, and Nia and Madi are nowhere to be seen.

Lexa’s aunt carries in her too-full glass of wine, the bottle, too, and sits them both within her reach. When she scoops a few foods onto her plate and then digs in, without so much as unfurling her napkin or chastising Quint for resting his elbows on the table, Lexa and Diana’s boys are sure she’s cracked. 

It’s Roan who asks, “She’s still not coming out, then?”

Diana pauses, fork in hand, finishes chewing her green bean casserole, answers, “Not yet.”

They’re side-by-side, Roan and Diana, but she hardly even looks at him.

Roan sighs, scratches at his scruffy face, and Lexa realizes how exhausted he looks. His tie is abandoned, like Cage’s was, his suit jacket slung on a chair in another room. He leans back in his chair.

“Is she talking yet?”

“Only to ask us to leave,” Nia says, appearing in the doorway.

Lexa watches her eye the two open seats—it’s a large table, long enough to seat ten people comfortably, but Nia’s only options are the spot between Cage and Quint, or the one separating Lexa and Carl—and tries not to frown when the woman settles gracefully into the one beside Lexa.

“She doesn’t want to talk to us,” Diana admits, red-eyed, looking at everyone around the table in turn and reaching for the stem of her glass, “She thinks we lied to her.”

It’s easy not to think about Madi, until Diana says that, and it becomes impossible.

“You did,” Lexa reminds her.

“Lexa—” Dante warns, wincing in her direction before either of the older women in the room can respond.

Clarke and Dante and Diana’s sons are quiet, still pushing food around their plates.

“That’s a gross over-simplification,” Nia snaps, staring daggers, “She’s four.”

“We’ve already had this conversation,” Lexa says, “and, if you remember, you told me she didn’t need the complete truth.”

“We wanted to protect her,” Diana says, and Lexa believes. Her aunt looks so distraught, with one hand in Dante’s and one on her wine glass, and Lexa believes her, but she can’t ignore her failure, either.

“You told her that her parents were, what? Disapparated by angels. Just plucked from earth, never to be seen again,” Lexa says, feeling a lump swelling in her throat, and snarling when Cage very quietly tries to butt in to explain disapparation to his mother only for Carl to tell him to _shut it_ in a harsh whisper, “You didn’t even explain any of it, and you weren’t going to let her say goodbye. Sounds a lot like lying to me.”

“Of course, you go for the ‘I told you so’,” Nia dismisses, as though she knows Lexa. As though she’s picked up on a hundred little indicators, and each one has suggested the same inevitable conclusion about her. It makes Lexa’s skin crawl, because there are only two things that could make Nia think she knows her: one day of knowing each other, or whatever she thinks of Titus.

“This isn’t ‘I told you so,’” Clarke interjects, drawing Nia’s death stare away from Lexa, for a moment.

“Sure it is,” the woman counters, only softening when Roan lets out an exasperated _mother, please_ directly across from her.

“This is uncharted territory for us all,” Dante tries, “We’re going to make some mistakes. I’m sure this won’t be the only one.”

The lump in Lexa’s throat seems to swell by the second.

“Lexa, sweetheart, you must know we’re just trying our best,” Diana insists.

“This wasn’t your best,” Roan speaks up, loudly, “It wasn’t. There were options on the table, you chose the worst.”

He stares into his plate, shakes his head while he speaks, purses and bites his lips like he’s trying not to cry.

“What did you want us to do,” Nia asks, looking to her son, “What were we supposed to say?”

Not for the fist time, Lexa sees that icy façade crack, ever-so-slightly, and give way to the same heavy sadness she’s seen glimpses of in everyone around her, but it isn’t enough, either. Their guilt, Nia’s and Diana’s and Dante’s, it isn’t enough to make Lexa overlook Madi, who drew the shortest from a bunch of unbearably short straws.

“What were you—” Lexa shakes her head, and lets out this sound that’s somewhere between a strangled laugh and a sigh, because she doesn’t want to punish these people, who clearly meant well, but she _needs_ them to understand what they’ve done. “You were supposed to tell her the truth. You were supposed to be honest and clear, and to hold her hand through the worst part of her life.”

When Clarke’s hand reaches for Lexa’s, she clings to it like a lifeline. Her fingers squeeze so tightly into the spaces between Clarke’s that Lexa’s almost afraid it hurts.

“You were supposed to say that her parents had an accident, and they died. That they loved her,” Lexa says, looking from Nia to her aunt and then to her uncle, “or _whatever_ ,” she spits, “whatever you wanted about God, or being with angels, or them looking down and protecting her from their heavenly vantage point, whatever, but that death is a part of life, whether we want it to be or not. _That_ is what you should’ve said, and then you should’ve let that kid say goodbye to her parents.”

The table goes silent. The boys don’t even bother pushing their food around, to mask the tension. All eyes are on Lexa as she stares Nia down through blurry eyes. Her chin quivers and she has to swipe at her nose more than once with the hand that isn’t clamped to Clarke’s, but her gaze doesn’t waver, not once.

“Fine,” Nia breathes, cold and guarded again, “if you think you know what’s best for a child you only met today, if you have a prepared speech, then, by all means, handle this.”

“Mother,” Roan tries again, “don’t.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Carl throws out there.

“No,” she presses, “if Lexa has such a keen idea, if she feels so strongly about what needs to be said, then she should do it herself.”

“We’re all stressed, and it’s been a long day,” Dante tries, a steady hand lifted from the table.

Diana drains her glass, and Cage adds, “the longest,” while his mother refills it.

Quint, still quiet on his end of the table, doesn’t say a word, but he kicks Cage under the table, so Dante can continue.

“Look,” Lexa’s uncle starts, “the damage is done, and it’s probably best to just give Madi some space. We can figure this out, all of us, with cooler heads in the morning.”

Nobody seems to want to ask him whether he thinks they should solve this problem before, during, or after the funeral they have to go to in the morning, let alone how they’re going to get Madi to leave her room or eat dinner for the rest of the night, and Lexa sees him retract the hand. Sees him relax into the idea that they’ve tabled the discussion.

Lexa’s see this for what it is though. It’s a challenge that Nia is posing, and, if she’s right, one Nia doesn’t expect her to accept. Before she can stop herself, she’s saying, “No. I’ll go. I’ll talk to her.”

“Are you sure,” Clarke asks, voice low, leaning close to the brunette’s ear, and squeezing her hand.

Lexa looks at Clarke, just once, she takes in those worried blue eyes and the tight frown, and meets them with a shaky smile before she turns back to the other adults in the room.

“I know you think I’m being arrogant,” she tells Nia, chin held high, faking the conviction she wishes she felt, “and I know you don’t like me, but I’m one of the only adults in this room who hasn’t broken her trust.”

“Lexa, sweetheart,” Diana starts, but Lexa doesn’t wait for her to finish.

“How badly do you think I can fuck this up,” Lexa asks incredulously, “It’s not like she can be surprised to see her dead parents again. What do we really have to lose here?”

“I suppose,” Dante speaks up before either Nia or Diana can respond, “Lexa’s right. Madi needs someone she trusts, and none of us are in that position, right now.”

This time, it’s Dante who catches the brunt of Nia’s deadly stare, but he doesn’t back down. She crosses her arms and sucks in her cheeks, and he doesn’t even flinch.

Beside him, Diana brings a hand to her mouth, chews a fingernail for just a second, before she remembers who she is, or who she pretends to be, and drops it to her side. She frowns carefully at her husband, and then at Lexa.

She seems to study her niece’s face, just long enough to make Lexa squirm, and then she sighs, and says, “Well, you _are_ her sister.”

“You can’t be serious,” Nia says, as though this wasn’t her idea. Wasn’t the very challenge she posed to Lexa.

“Go talk to her,” Diana says, more firmly this time. “Tell her the truth.”

Lexa nods, dropping the hand in hers to stand from the table, resolutely ignoring the apprehension that practically radiates off of Clarke.

“Just,” Diana’s voice stops her as she turns away, “Be nice. Not that you aren’t, but, you know.”

Lexa rolls her eyes, laughs, even, just for a second, while tears keep prickling her eyes and that heavy feeling in her chest comes back with a vengeance.

“Orphan, remember,” she tells Diana, pointing her thumb at her own chest, “I’ve got this.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lexa talks to Madi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if y'all know this, but lots of characters in this fic think Clarke and Lexa are together, even though they aren't. You miiiight even say they're constantly mistaken for a couple.
> 
> I have some Clexa heavy scenes saved up for this fic, the type of stuff that makes them seem pretty coupley and also satisfies Day Two of Clexa Week 2018, but I didn't want to skip the sister stuff, so I hope this little haphazardly written standalone Lexa/Madi chapter whets your appetite until I can post the Clexa stuff for this fic later this week.
> 
> PS- The comments have been on fire lately, and I suck at responding, but I totally read every single one (some of them like 17 times), and they keep me going on this project and all the other junk I'm working on.
> 
> PPS- I'm slightly more prepared for Day Three and Day Four than I was for Day Two. One of my friends told me I'm a very chaotic Gemini, and that's why I keep trying to start new projects before I finish them, so *shrug emoji* blame the stars i guess.
> 
> Y'all rock. Really. Thanks for your patience and for reading!

Lexa is a different person now than she was when her mother was alive. She knows she should be, that five years changes everyone. That five years _should_ change everyone. She knows that some things, things like age, like experience or growth, would’ve changed her either way, but loss? The deepest, most scarring loss she’s ever felt, changed her faster. It expedited a process that she would’ve been happy to experience slowly.

She wonders if Madi is changed, too. Whether the last few hours of this little girl’s life, or the gaping space between losing her parents and actually realizing the loss, has changed her yet.

This time, when she stands before the open door to the yellow room, Lexa doesn’t let hesitation get the best of her. She channels as much of Anya as she can, doesn’t bother waiting to be invited in after her knuckles rap against the door frame, just crosses that same threshold into the room Madi has refused to leave for hours.

She powers through her own shock when she sees the bed, sheets still smooth across the surface, empty. The chair in the corner, vacant, save for a duffel bag that she doesn’t remember seeing earlier.

Lexa remembers this house, in so much more detail than she does Titus, really. She remembers the many hiding places that can be found under this broad roof. She knows firsthand what it feels like to be restless, to be sad, to want to disappear in this house. She doesn’t know this little girl, this half-sister in distress, but Lexa knows the first place she would hide, if she were a kid again, alone and afraid and trapped.

She moves slowly but resolutely until she can kneel beside the bed. She lets her fingers edge under the fabric of the bed skirt, and steels herself with a deep breath.

“Madi,” she says, “it’s Lexa.”

There’s no response, but she considers it a good sign when she isn’t swatted or shouted away. She pulls at the bed skirt, stoops just enough to peek underneath it, and sees Madi, huddled into a little ball, her back to Lexa. She’s so quiet that Lexa almost thinks she’s fallen asleep. But, then Lexa sees her shoulders shake, and she knows she hasn’t.

“Why don’t you come out from under there,” Lexa tries, but the kid doesn’t budge an inch.

“Okay,” Lexa says, her voice soft, “Can I join you?”

Madi shrugs, one unsteady shoulder creeping up toward a messy mop of hair, then dropping away.

Lexa steps out of her heels and lowers herself to the floor, sun-bleached wood warm under her feet and legs, until she’s flat on her back. Moving into the space beside Madi requires an awkward bit of shimmying and scooting—because there’s a huge chasm between four and twenty-five, and, on the upper end of it, it’s a hell of a lot harder to get underneath a bed without getting caught or scraped or stuck. She lets the bed skirt fall back into place when they’re only inches apart, lets it cocoon her and Madi in the fading yellow light of the evening sun filtered through patterned fabric.

Somewhere, in the back of her mind, Lexa knows she’s lying on a fine layer of dust, that it’s collecting along the back of her dress and working itself into her hair. It bothers her less than not knowing what to say.

For all her bravado, for her insistence that this was a straightforward task— _tell her the truth, hold her hand_ —she hadn’t considered having to contend with the quiet sniffling she can only just make out.

Lexa’s only ever been the little sister. She’s only ever been the one who gets to break apart, whether she wants to or not, while Anya wields the glue. She does the bulk of the crying and the sniffling, only after holding everything in for too long, and then she gets carefully and lovingly reassembled. She doesn’t have the tools for this, doesn’t even think a handbook for grief would help.

Instinct doesn’t seem to be enough; it doesn’t seem to surge up inside her and illuminate the right things to say or to do. With her back flat, her bones settling stiffly against the hard floor, Lexa doesn’t know if the words will come.

She’s at a loss for ideas, because she feels out of her depth, because she feels light-years from anything she’s ever had to do for Anya.

She looks over at Madi, sniffling and small and broken in a way she’s too young to comprehend, and Lexa tries to remember things Anya’s said, tries to imagine what she would say now. It doesn’t feel like enough, her imagination, but Lexa knows nothing will.

It isn’t instinct screaming at her, not maturity or wisdom, that tells her where to start.

It’s the quiet longing for the sister who has always fixed everything, or tried damn hard, to be here, to fix this, too.

She starts with the sister she knows, and she hopes that she was right, earlier, when she said there was nothing more that could be done to hurt the sister that she doesn’t.

“I have a sister, you know,” Lexa says, and then she finds herself amending it to, “ _Another_ sister.”

She can hear Madi breathing. She can hear her still crying.

“Anya. She’s four years older than I am,” Lexa explains, looking up at the underside of the mattress, “well, four-and-a-half.”

She imagines Anya stressing the extra half, because _that’s almost six months of pure wisdom, Lex_. She imagines herself, scoffing and reminding Anya that those first four-and-a-half years were probably the most boring of her life.

“Anya is sort of the bravest person I know,” Lexa says, “and sometimes, when we were kids, she had to be extra brave if I was scared, or sad, or both. Even when she was scared or sad, too. Like, if there was a scary part in a movie, Anya watched while I hid behind my hands, and then she told me when it was safe to look again. She did that for me because she was my big sister, and it was her job to look after me. Does that make sense?”

She looks over at Madi again, the wispy ends of the little girl’s hair still inches away, but this time, instead of just sniffling, she nods.

“Well, Anya and I had the same mom, but you and I had the same dad. Do you know what that means?”

Unruly hair shifts, and, finally, Madi flops from her side to her back to look at Lexa. She has the stuffed animal Lexa saw earlier, the tattered little elephant with too-long legs, tight in her arms, and her eyes are so red, so bloodshot and shiny, that Lexa’s heart clenches in her chest.

“I don’t really know for sure what it means either,” Lexa admits, “It’s still kind of new, but I’m your big sister, okay?”

Madi’s face is shiny with tears, her cheeks flushed in splotchy patches of red when she nods again.

“That means it’s my job to look out for you, especially when you’re sad. Just like Anya does for me.”

She smiles at Madi in a way she hopes is reassuring and isn’t surprised when the girl doesn’t return it.

Lexa knows the sort of commitment required to promise something like that to a kid, and, looking at this little person with wild brown curls and chubby cheeks and the saddest eyes, she’s struck by how much she means it. She’s sure she doesn’t know yet what it’ll take to be a decent older sister, and she doesn’t have much time left to do it in person, but she’ll do it.

“Does that sound okay,” she asks, because people keep telling Madi things, most of them euphemisms at best, lies at worst, but Lexa doubts people have asked her much. Madi frowns at her, more deeply than before, and Lexa’s not sure how she’ll be able to honor a ‘no’—preference can’t exactly counter fact or genetics—but that isn’t what she gets.

Instead, Madi asks, “Did my mommy and daddy die,” her lip quivering, her voice raw as she whispers the words.  
_Tell her the truth. Hold her hand_.

“Yeah,” Lexa nods, and emotion swells in her throat, positively choking her when Madi’s face crumbles and she starts crying again. “They died.”

Lexa isn’t unfamiliar with tears. Outside of this strange emotional limbo she’s been trapped in for days, she’s cried her fair share of them. Dealing with Madi’s is harder than dealing with her own. The sniffling was hard to hear, but seeing this kid cry so hard that it’s more of a sob, so hard that she barely even chokes out a sound, feels like torture.

Lexa starts crying, too, her tears trickling right down the side of her face and into her hair, when she takes a chance and reaches out for Madi’s hand. It’s no small victory when she doesn’t pull away.

They stay like that for a long time, Madi practically breathless in her tears, Lexa clinging to her hand, almost afraid to let go. She lets her cry, looks up at the underside of the mattress instead of watching the girl crumble even further.

The light filtering through the bed skirt shifts, maybe dims a little, and Lexa lets Madi cry, lets her butt her warm little forehead against Lexa’s bicep, lets go of her hand long enough to wrap her arm around Madi instead. Madi’s tears soak into Lexa’s dress, they smear along her skin, and she just rubs the girl’s back and lets it happen.

 

 

Lexa promises to answer all Madi’s questions honestly. It’s the only way she gets the girl to follow her out from under the bed.

Everyone has been hiding the truth from Madi, offering her euphemisms and feel-good sentimentalist bullshit, and she’s so little and trusting that she keeps believing them. Lexa doesn’t have Anya’s years of experience being a big sister, but she’s good at being honest. If she can offer her nothing else, Lexa can arm this kid with the truth.

That, and giving Madi time to work through it, is what gets the girl out of the yellow room and downstairs to the kitchen. Her face is still red when she climbs up onto one of the stools against the kitchen island and lets Lexa pour her a small glass of water and make her a plate mostly composed of junk food. She slumps, her little elbow propping her up against the marble and her fist distorting her cheek until it makes one of her eyes look half-closed.

 _They died in a car accident. No, they can’t come back like video game characters. Diana says they are, but I don’t know if angels are real_.

Once the questions start, they don’t really stop.

“Why’d they look like that? In the other room,” she asks, snapping a pretzel in half and wrapping part of it up in a little piece of salami before popping it into her mouth.

Madi doesn’t touch her water, her voice still rough with fatigue and sorrow.

Lexa leans on both elbows on her side of the island and tries to think of the most sensitive way to explain it.

“That’s what happens, when people die,” she shrugs, watching Madi chew with her mouth open, “they—their bodies— get all cleaned and dressed up by a mortician. Sometimes, they look a little different than we remember them.”

“Why,” she asks, those unkempt eyebrows almost meeting in the middle. “And how do we know if it’s them if they look all weird?”

“Because, when people die, they get kind of pale, so the people who clean them—”

“The morcians,” Madi asks, dragging a potato chip through yogurt, without showing any sign that she knows how odd it is.

“Morticians,” Lexa says, trying to hide her grimace, “do their makeup, too. They try to make them look like they did when they were alive,” then she shrugs again and admits, “It doesn’t always work, though.”

“But why do they have to wear makeup?”

A square of cheese gets dragged through the ketchup, now, and Lexa wonders if she shouldn’t have offered the kid condiments.

“They wear makeup so that we can do what we did earlier today,” Lexa says, “and invite their friends and family to see them one more time to say goodbye.”

“Why didn’t you invite me,” Madi asks, and then she’s dropping the bitten square of cheese so that she can cross her arms in front of her body and scowl at Lexa.

And maybe Nia wasn’t wrong about Lexa, because she has half a mind to throw Nia and Diana and Dante under the bus, to let Madi take her grievances their way, if only to show them she was right.

“That was a mistake,” Lexa says, because she thinks it’s true. “We thought it might be too scary for you to see them like that, and we didn’t want to make this any scarier for you.”

“I’m not scared,” Madi says, defiant, her mouth curling tightly around the words. “My mommy says I’m brave.”

Her chin lifts higher, like she expects Lexa to challenge her.

Lexa doesn’t, especially when she sees the way Madi’s chin quivers and her eyes well up.

Instead, Lexa lets out an exasperated breath.

“We messed up,” she tells her. “we underestimated you.”

“I don’t even know what that word means,” Madi says, chin still quivering, frown still etched deeply into her face.

Lexa almost wants to laugh. They _really_ underestimated this stubborn little girl.

“It means we didn’t know how much you could handle, so we didn’t let you try at all,” Lexa sighs.

“That’s dumb,” Madi informs her, not letting up on the arm-crossing or frowning.

“Sometimes grownups are dumb,” Lexa shrugs again, “and sometimes we’re wrong.”

 

 

Lexa has to applaud Clarke’s restraint. The blonde managed to make herself scarce while Lexa and Madi talked, so much so that the first time Lexa sees her after leaving the dining room is almost two hours later, when she and Madi are side-by-side on a sofa in the salon.

They’d crossed paths with a few of the other adults—Carl, who only briefly paused to take in Madi on her stool before he grabbed himself a soda and left the room; Diana, who was probably going to grab another bottle of wine, but stopped herself when she saw Madi and wrapped the little girl up in a clumsy side hug, slurred an apology, and left after a squeeze of Lexa’s shoulder; Nia who looked so shocked from the doorway that she forgot to scowl in Lexa’s direction, but left without a word when Madi glared at her—but Clarke was nowhere to be seen.

When Madi was done eating, having mixed and crumbled and bitten into all the food on her plate, even if she didn’t finish most of it, she looked close to falling over, but she wasn’t ready to stop asking questions. Madi picked the salon, Lexa doesn’t know why. She just slipped off her stool at some point and gravitated there, expecting Lexa to follow her, and pulling her along by the hand, just as she had earlier, when Lexa didn’t.

Lexa fielded question after question, trying not to go too stiff when Madi’s eyes seemed to get heavy, and her head followed suit against Lexa’s arm.

The girl was mid-way through a question when she yawned so hard it rattled her whole body. Lexa had barely answered by the time she heard the quiet snoring.

That’s how Clarke finds them: Madi leaning heavily into Lexa, snoring, and Lexa trying her best not to interrupt her tentative sleep.

“I don’t want you to think I doubted you,” Clarke says when she spots them, “but I didn’t expect this.”

Lexa looks up at the blonde as she comes to lean against the arm of the sofa.

“Honestly? Neither did I.”

Lexa doesn’t want to move at first, but Clarke reminds her that it’s getting late, that Madi will sleep better in a bed, and Lexa can’t sit up all night. Clarke convinces her they’ll both be better off with a decent night’s sleep, and Lexa knows she’s right.

She doesn’t let Clarke wake the little girl though. Instead Lexa eases herself out from under Madi, letting Clarke catch the girl before she can slump into the space Lexa sneaks out of, and then peels her from the sofa to gather her in her arms. She’s still so small, and it’s not like Lexa’s had a chance to forget that exactly, but the kid seems so much smaller drooping over her shoulder with gravity and fatigue.

Clarke walks just behind them, shadowing Lexa on the stairs, maybe nervous that she’ll miss a step. The blonde pulls back the covers so Lexa can settle Madi on the fitted sheet. Her hair is fanned out along the pillow, and Lexa is pulling away when Madi stirs, blinking sleepily and reaching out to catch one of Lexa’s hands.

“You’re leaving,” she asks drowsily.

“Only until the morning,” Lexa says. “Then we’ll be back.”

“And then I can say goodbye,” Madi yawns.

“Yeah,” Lexa tells her, smoothing some of that wild hair down with her free hand, “Tomorrow you can say goodbye.”

“Promise?”

“Promise,” Lexa smiles.

“Mmkay,” she mumbles, and then those eyes are slipping closed again, and Lexa lets Madi hold on to her hand until her grip goes slack and then falls away.

Then she nods her head toward the door, picks up her heels, and follows Clarke back out the door.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back at the hotel, Lexa can’t shut off her brain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow, I'm very busy these days, but I am working on a few things that are relevant to this and my other stories. Hopefully I'll have some decent words and updates for y'all throughout April!
> 
> I really am reading all the comments as they come in, and they're super encouraging, so I hope to also respond to those in April!
> 
> (Shout out to @likablethief for noticing I posted the same chapter twice in a row! I could say it was an artistic choice, or that I just really dug a bit of pure Clexa in the midst of all the dead dad bummers, but it was just my shoddy Wi-Fi. It jokes, i kid, it doesn't load pages correctly when I post, I don't note the word counts. It's a sacred relationship. Thanks for catching that!)
> 
> As always, thanks for reading!

Back at the hotel, Lexa can’t shut off her brain.

Not while she strips off her dress and kicks off her heels. Not while she changes into shorts and a tank top. Not while she washes away her makeup. Not while she brushes her teeth. Not while she pulls her hair up into a loose ponytail.

Her thoughts are too loud and insistent, too flooded with feelings, too keyed into everything—the orange-tinged line marring Titus’ pale nose; Madi’s heartbroken little face asking for nothing but the truth; Diana’s bloodshot eyes as she drank herself into a stupor; the solemn nod from Roan in the darkness of the hall as they’d made their escape from the yellow room—to mute.

Lexa thinks she might be going out of her mind right now, if she weren’t so firmly trapped inside it.

It’s far too late to call Anya, thanks to the six-hour time difference, and Lexa isn’t even sure she’d want to. She knows her sister would shoulder every bit of her hurt if she asked her to, but, for the first time, Lexa knows how that feels, and so she can’t ask.

And, if she can’t ask, then she certainly couldn’t call, because Anya would only need to hear Lexa’s voice to know how much this visit was taking out of her.

“You’re thinking too hard,” Clarke informs her, while Lexa stands in front of the closet inspecting her outfit for the funeral.

She’s been standing here for a while, she knows. She gravitated to the open closet after finally making her peace with their makeup bags and hair products already being in their proper places, but only after rearranging them all a few times.

She doesn’t know how long she spent in the bathroom, but she can imagine it was entirely too long. Their toothbrushes were already side-by-side in their magnetic travel cases, a small tube of spearmint toothpaste beneath Lexa’s and a much larger one of sensitive toothpaste lined up under Clarke’s. Lexa’s makeup bag was already unpacked to the right of the countertop, and Clarke’s to the left, the brunette’s astringent beside the cold tap, Clarke’s toner centimeters from the hot.

If Clarke hadn’t already lined up their respective shampoos and conditioners on the edge of the tub and left Lexa’s detangling comb opposite her own hair brush in front of the makeup bags, Lexa would’ve wasted even more time lining it all up.

She doesn’t think the blonde looks up from her book when she says it, doubts she’s been watching her closely, if at all. Clarke doesn’t have to watch Lexa obsessively lint roll her dress or shine imaginary scuff-marks from her heels to know she’s thinking too hard.

Twenty years in, and Clarke has a sixth sense for these things.

A sixth sense for Lexa, anyway.

“Would you expect anything else,” Lexa asks, catching a hand on the loose thread along the lining of Clarke’s shoe.

“No,” Clarke admits, huffing out a laugh, “but it’s going to drive you nuts.”

Lexa wishes she had a pair of scissors, gets momentarily distracted wondering whether she has a pair in the nail kit tucked in her bag.

“And you are going to drive us both nuts,” Clarke sighs. She caps her highlighter, then launches it across the room to hit Lexa on the shoulder. “Leave my shoe alone and come here.”

There’s a softness in Clarke’s voice, something Lexa recognizes as intentional, a way of coaxing her out of her mind and back into the real world.

“You threw a highlighter at me,” Lexa pouts.

“Bring that over, too,” Clarke instructs, looking down at her book, like she doesn’t have to watch Lexa to know she’ll do as she’s told. Lexa crosses her arms, petulantly waiting for the blonde to apologize, if only because it’s the one thing she can focus on that doesn’t make her feel overwhelmed, but then Clarke tacks on, _pretty please, cherry on top, because you love me_ , and Lexa’s powerless to refuse her.

She huffs and rolls her eyes and picks up Clarke’s neon green highlighter, pinching it between two fingers like someone else’s used cigarette, before she shuffles over to the bed. Clarke closes the pages she’s studying around one hand and leans over to lift the covers for Lexa with the other.

Lexa crawls beneath the comforter, even though Clarke is still sitting on top of it and drops the highlighter onto the blonde’s lap.

“I finished half a chapter already,” Clarke says, and Lexa almost blushes because all she’s done is check on things that had already been double checked before Clarke even slipped into her long pajama t-shirt, and she’s heard months of complaints about how long-winded the chapters are in this particular text book; she’d be embarrassed with anyone else, but Clarke knows what to expect when Lexa’s in her head, and it doesn’t faze her.

The pillow Lexa brought from home is wedged with Clarke’s under the blonde’s back, so Lexa pulls one of the overstuffed hotel pillows under her head and looks up at the other woman.

“You’re a machine,” Lexa tells her, because Clarke _is_ a machine, and she’s working incredibly hard to get this degree, even with the added distraction of Lexa’s family crap.

“And you need to get some rest,” Clarke tells her, sizing her up, those blue eyes roving along Lexa’s face.

Sometimes, Clarke looks at her, and Lexa’s convinced the other woman can read her mind. All the thoughts and all the mess and all the tangles, and Lexa’s half-sure Clarke can see right through it. “I know, we aren’t talking about it yet, but you can’t stay up doing this all night, okay? You’re exhausting yourself.”

“I’m not—”

“The alarm is set,” Clarke says with a gentle firmness, “our clothes are hanging and lint-free and lined up. We have everything we need, and it’s all exactly where it should be. C’mon, Lex.”

At that, Clarke opens the arm closest to Lexa. She curves a warm hand around a tense shoulder and pulls and guides until Lexa’s cuddling into her side, curly hair contained in its ponytail and resting tucked against Clarke’s shoulder.

When Lexa’s settled, when the comforter is tucked around her waist and her nose and cheek are nudging against Clarke’s chest, the blonde reopens her book.

Lexa’s brain can’t seem to shut itself off for a long time, but, eventually, the steady cadence of Clarke’s voice relaying facts about the spreading of infectious diseases soothes her to sleep.

 

 

Lexa wakes up before the alarm can ring. She’s a little too warm in the cocoon of blankets, a little too aware of the sunlight creeping past the blinds to glare in her face, but she’s also comfier than she’s been in ages.

That, the extreme comfort, probably stems from being practically on top of Clarke.

Lexa’s still wrapped firmly in the blankets, and, at some point, Clarke must’ve maneuvered her enough to join her, because Lexa’s torso is weighing Clarke’s down, one of her legs tucked tightly against one of Clarke’s, and her head is more squarely against the blonde’s chest, enough to feel the thudding of her heart.

For a few, blissfully fuzzy seconds, Lexa is warm and content in Clarke’s arms, and it takes just as much time for her to remember that it isn’t in the way she wants.

It isn’t the first time they’ve cuddled, and Lexa’s sure it won’t be the last, because if she’s spent twenty years learning to create enough space for Clarke to vent her feelings, then Clarke’s spent that time learning to hold a space safe enough for Lexa to steep in her own. It isn’t the first, and it won’t be the last, but, as much as Lexa loves having Clarke close, she wishes the circumstances were different.

Lexa wants the _one of us is sad_ cuddles, and she wants the _idleness is the only thing saving my coworker from a fist to the face_ cuddles, and she wants the _PMS is personally victimizing one of us_ cuddles, but, sometimes, she just wishes she didn’t need a reason.

Lexa can have Clarke like this, when one of them is hurting, and there isn’t some other girl or guy scrutinizing their closeness, and it can be amazing, but she doesn’t _just_ want her like this.

She wants more.

She wants to wake up like this, her head pillowed on Clarke’s chest, her arm half-asleep where she tried to tuck it under the other woman’s torso, and she doesn’t want to have to come up with a why. She doesn’t want to worry whether one of them is crossing some relationship boundary if a hug goes on for too long, or whether someone else will be jealous enough to ask them to stop. She doesn’t want to have to force herself to let go when the credits of the movie roll, or a wave of tears ends, or the sun rises.

Lexa wants to be allowed to hold on longer.

To hold _Clarke_ longer.

But, she can’t do that. Not until she starts the hardest sort of conversation. Not until she tells Clarke how she feels and asks how Clarke feels in return. Not until something changes or solidifies between them.

Lexa has to remind herself that she can’t even think about that conversation until they’re on the other side of all this—the driving and the wake and the relatives and the funeral—and, she wants it to be a comfort, the reminder that there’s a finish line in all this, and crossing it means taking her chances with Clarke, but it isn’t.

She reminds herself of all the shit they have to get through, and Lexa mostly feels silly.

She feels silly for letting her feelings for Clarke rest on the backburner for so long, and even sillier because the only thing that’s been able to get her mind off Titus and the secrets he left behind in lieu of normal things like fatherly love and decent advice has been Clarke, and silliest for allowing something as simple as comfort or sleep delude her into being more upset about the feelings she’s been ignoring for too long than the funeral she has to get herself—and Madi—through.

She can’t decide whether it felt better or worse to believe that not being able to hold Clarke the way she wants to was her biggest problem, so, she listens to her best friend’s heartbeat, she ignores the pins and needles in her left hand, she holds on. At least until the alarm they set comes to life, and she has to separate from Clarke long enough to shut it off.

And, when Clarke, ever-reluctant to wake up early, begs for five minutes and sleepily rolls onto her side to push Lexa back down onto the mattress and wriggles closer to her, Lexa allows herself to hold on, just a little longer.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not saying I didn't proofread, but...like...it wasn't a priority.


End file.
